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When Emily Bickford and Matthew Bradeen separated about a decade ago, they had an agreement to share parental rights and responsibilities over their now 13-year-old daughter — including decisions about the child’s education, medical care and parent-teacher conferences. “Whenever possible,” these decisions would be made jointly, with the best interest of their child in mind.
But in 2021, this agreement began to break down after Bickford started taking their daughter to Calvary Chapel Greater Portland without Bradeen’s agreement. The father later learned that the girl was going to be baptized.
Bradeen was alarmed by the church’s teachings and how they were impacting his daughter. The Calvary’s pastor teaches the Bible “verse by verse, chapter by chapter” and includes “quite vivid descriptions of Hell,” . These teachings were making the child scared and anxious, the document states.
During the parental dispute, the pastor broached the parental disagreement and the legal case during a service and offered a lengthy prayer about the case, according to the court record. The document also alleges that the messages the child received at the church alienated her from her father. During their mediation sessions, the parents brought in experts on “cults” to help resolve their dispute.
Bickford, the girl’s mother, argued that Bradeen “had attempted to deny the child religious training and prevent her church attendance and baptism,” according to the court document. Both parents ultimately sought sole responsibility for their daughter’s religious upbringing. They also disagreed about vaccines, with the court finding that Bradeen’s position on that issue was in the child’s best interests.
Lately, I’ve written stories about what happens when parental rights come into conflict with cultural norms or government protections. This case highlights another tension: How much authority should a parent have over a child’s religious upbringing? And when two parents have different visions for their child’s religious life, when should a court intervene?
In 2024, the Portland District Court gave the father authority to make religious-related decisions and said Bickford couldn’t read the Bible or religious materials to her daughter or take her to church. While the court considered Bickford a fit parent overall and found no fault in biblical teaching alone, it deemed her unfit for her daughter’s upbringing when it came to faith.
The court rooted its argument not so much in whether Bickford’s religious beliefs were right or wrong, but rather which parent was best positioned to make religious decisions for their child and that it needed to protect the child from “immediate and substantial psychological harm,” according to court records.
Bickford appealed this decision and argued that the decision interfered with her religious liberty.
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court wrestled with these questions earlier this month, according to the Maine Monitor. In , issued on Sept. 1, the judge affirmed a lower-court ruling that gave the father the decision-making authority over the girl’s religious upbringing and medical care.
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But despite the same outcome, the state’s highest court rejected the lower court’s logic of “strict scrutiny” and instead based its decision on what the judge deemed in the child’s best interest.
But that definition of “the best interest of the child,” a criterion that governs custody battles, is also complicated — the courts have to weigh the child’s home environment, the parents’ fitness and the child’s own wishes.
Parents should be able to pass their faith to their children (keep on reading for a recent report on why that’s important) and have a constitutional right to do so. But a child’s honest experience should also be taken into consideration.
Liberty Counsel, the religious liberty nonprofit which represents Bickford, says it plans to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case.
What shapes whether kids have faith in adulthood?
A June 2026 study by the Institute for Family Studies and Communio looked at American adults ages 25 and older who grew up Christian to help explain what actually moves religion from one generation to the next.
The data, drawn from four major data sets including the Global Flourishing Study and the National Study of Youth and Religion, point to one critical place that will impact the future: the home.
Here are some findings:
- Parents’ own devotion is contagious. When parents attended church weekly as they were raising kids, 26% of those children were still doing so in their 30s and 40s — more than double the 12% rate among children of nonweekly attenders.
- Conversations about faith matter. Discussing faith at home multiple times a week was one of the most powerful predictors of children’s religiosity as adults.
- Two engaged parents outperform one. When children worshipped weekly alongside both parents, 41% continued the habit as adults.
- Strong relationships increase the odds of religiosity. Adults who recalled a very good bond with both parents in childhood had 76% higher odds of weekly attendance, 87% higher odds of viewing religion as highly important, and 97% higher odds of believing in God.
Fresh off the press:
- I visited Josh Sabey and Sarah Perkins in rural Idaho ahead of their new 9/11 documentary about how the New York City residents came together to decide how to rebuild Ground Zero. We also talked about reconciliation and healing after police and social workers from the Department of Children and Families took their children.
- A mother in Virginia let her child walk to a pond. Criminal charges followed.
- On the eve of Constitution Day, President Dallin H. Oaks will speak at the Washington National Cathedral. Stay tuned for my report from Washington, D.C.
What I’m reading and listening to
- David Brooks and Notre Dame philosopher Meghan Sullivan on what is the good life. — The Atlantic
- In a recent roundtable with self-described Christian nationalist Doug Wilson at the University of Idaho, Al Mohler, the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said he would like “biblical Christianity to become more thick on the ground, more real, and more substantial, and more acknowledged as the preconditions for the American experiment.”
- The group of Utah women known as MWEG (or Mormon Women for Ethical Government) is at the center of a political fight. — The New York Times
- Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei penned an essay making the case for slowing down the development of AI.
- The movement Charlie Kirk left behind. — The Deseret News
End note
Each week, I’m faced with a difficult choice: Out of the many stories happening nationally and globally where religion intersects with public life, I choose one to focus on in this newsletter. It’s usually a story that feels important, timely and interesting to me, one that opens the door to a bigger conversation.
But I’d love to hear from you: What kinds of stories would you like to see in this newsletter?
Send me an email at [email protected] and let me know what you’d like to see more of.