Mom Blocked from Reading Bible to Daughter Says Dad Stopped Girl's Baptism (Video)

Calvin Freiburger : Sep 8, 2026
LifeSiteNews.com

"Ava was really heartbroken. She asked her dad if she could attend a camp this past summer at Calvary Chapel. It's a camp that she went to the year prior. She can't go to any youth group events ... so she's really in her faith in Jesus Christ and Him alone right now, and she goes to a public school, so she is exposed to some things that I wouldn't agree with. But she is remaining steady in her faith, and we look forward to this court order to be overturned so that she can get back into fellowship." -Emily Bickford, mother

(Portland, ME) — [LifeSiteNews.com] A legal battle that stripped a Maine mother of the right to take her daughter to church began when the child's religious awakening triggered a "hidden anger" in her father, according to the mother slated to take her case to the US Supreme Court. (Screengrab image: via Liberty Counsel video)

As first covered last year by LifeSiteNews, the dispute is between Emily Bickford and Matthew Bradeen, the unmarried, separated parents of 13-year-old Ava. The father maintains that their daughter has displayed panic attacks since the mother started taking her to Calvary Chapel of Portland, stemming from fears that the rapture is drawing near and her sister and father will not make it to Heaven.

He produced a witness whose assessment of Calvary Chapel's sermons claimed that they were potentially psychologically harmful, prompting the court to transfer full control of the child's religious upbringing from Bickford to Bradeen.

Represented by Liberty Counsel, Bickford—whose child has not been abused or neglected, and whose parental fitness has not otherwise been disputed—said that this assessment offers nowhere near a sufficient basis for such a significant intrusion on a parent's right to direct her child's religious upbringing. This week, the Maine Supreme Court unanimously upheld the custody order, which Liberty Counsel has vowed to appeal to the nation's highest court.

Bickford, who agreed to 50/50 custody with Bradeen in 2013, when Ava was nine months old, recently elaborated on her story in a Freedom Alive interview with Liberty Counsel founder and chairman Mat Staver.

She explained that initially the two were "very good at co-parenting," they ‘communicated well" and "were willing to support one another if we ever needed help with anything." But the seeds of a shift were planted when Bickford had a religious conversion in 2017, and the "beginning of the changes in me were being made known to Matt as well through Ava. Ava had heard the Gospel as well, and... Subscribe for free to Breaking Christian News here

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