What if the church she and her mother attends is brainwashing her into believing her father is evil because he won't become a member?
My first reaction was "lets get the pitchforks" no court should tell someone how much faith and belief they should have, but I don't think this is going on here. It is an action between the father and mother and looks like the child is being manipulated into a bad relationship with the father.
I would question the integrity of the Pastor.
I have already formed the opinion that the mother is a piece of dirt. She has custody most of the time and must have been promoting the use of faith in Jesus Christ as a tool to separate father and daughter.
If the court meant that the mother or the church were teaching animosity toward the father, they should have said specifically that and with examples.
Instead they paint this broad-brush, anti-religious statement, able to be useful in other venues, about how negative it is for churches to teach their members TRULY to believe the tenets of their faith (rigidity.)
If the court wants to say something, they shouldn’t beat around the bush.
In a normal circumstance the courts should have no say at whether the parents should home school their children, but in the event of a divorce or a child custody case the courts are called on to determine the best interests of the child regardless of the wishes of the parents.
I suppose that where the father insists on the girl going to public school and the mother insisting on homeschooling her that the judge could order the child cut in half so that one half could go to public school and the other half could be homeschooled, but unfortunately that would have had to have been done at the embryonic stage in order to be successful.
This is not really a freedom of religion issue, this is a selfish parents dispute where the child is a pawn in a divorce proceeding.
If I were the judge and I was convinced that the child was being homeschooled by a bitter wife who had a vendetta against her husband and the husband had requested the child be sent to public school then I don't think I would have ruled differently. While certainly a public school environment is not spiritually friendly, neither is being indoctrinated 24 hours a day by a vengeful mother a very spiritually friendly environment either. The child will eventually grow to hate her father because her mother has taught her to do so, or hate her mother for hating her father.
So without the option of cutting the child in half, the judge had to make a decision that was going to make someone mad. And she did.