4

THE PASTOR IS PUSHED

Dost thou remember, Philip, the old fable

Told us when we were boys, in which the bear

Going for honey overturns the hive,

And is stung blind by bees? I am that beast

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Judas Maccabaeus, 1872

On May 21, 2013, during a warm thunderstorm that rattled the roof of the Peaceful Assembly Church and drenched the canopy of the suddenly bear-free woods, God told John Connell that his period of waiting was at an end.

“The time has come,” said God.

“Let go of everything,” said God.

And so he did.

Up until the time God spoke, Connell had continued to struggle against the town’s threats to repossess the church property. After a Facebook post in which he noted being 120 days from the final deadline, he got a text from his daughter, Theresa Rose Connell, who lived in Massachusetts.

“So this means… they can seize it? you’d have to sell it?” asked his daughter. “What’s the plan?”

No plan, Connell replied. With his characteristic flair for allegorizing his own life, he added that they could take his possessions, but not his soul.

His daughter expressed solidarity, as well as sympathy for the stress he must be feeling.

“I’d give it away before they can get their greedy hands on it,” said Connell. “… Pardon my putting it this way but—ummmmm—FUCK THEM! I’ve got better things on my mind than them. Like peace, love, and forgiveness.”

“Keep me posted,” said his daughter.

By the time the town was able to seize the property from Connell, Connell no longer had any property to seize. In August, he signed it over to a corporate entity called the Peaceful Assembly Church; its board of directors consisted exclusively of Free Towners and their allies—Jeremy Olson, Bob Hull, Tom Ploszaj, Jay Boucher, and James Reiher.

The church’s new directors found it easy to convince town officials to give them more time to resolve the tax liens; even though the ultimate remedy of a town against recalcitrant taxpayers is to seize the property, the officials wanted the tax revenue much more than they wanted the property.

The freedom that Connell had found when he purchased the church was nothing compared to the freedom he felt when he gave it away. Suddenly liberated from legal entanglements, he pursued holy pursuits and devoted himself to devotion. And there were signs that he was gaining traction as a spiritual presence in the community. The church directors enlisted him in a statewide libertarian-connected program that donated Thanksgiving dinners to those in need; under the program, Connell gave out about a dozen baskets. He continued his monthly Bible studies and other programs. He launched a new arts initiative and developed a mentoring relationship with a young artist, who’d found in God the strength to distance himself from a life of drugs. Things were clicking for Connell.

But the respite didn’t last.

THE FOLLOWING YEAR, in 2014, the three-member Grafton selectboard sat on folding chairs set up around a round plastic table to decide the church’s fate. The fire station’s fluorescent overhead lighting cast bleak shadows that gave no hint of the beautiful summer day outside.

A circuitous round of paperwork and negotiations between the selectboard and the church directors had yielded up no tax dollars. But it did yield a new tax exemption application that had to be duly considered, just as Connell’s had.

If the selectboard rejected the new application before them, the town could renew efforts to seize the property—the exact scenario that Connell’s divestment was intended to prevent.

Tom Ploszaj and Jeremy Olson, who had more of an appetite for paperwork than Connell, were eager to forestall a tax lien; they provided copies of their corporate registration, which demonstrated that they were a nonprofit entity in good standing with the state of New Hampshire.

But the debate shifted to whether the directors also needed formal recognition as a religious or charitable entity, a designation granted by the IRS to facilitate federal tax exemptions.

Olson, who was recording the proceedings, addressed the officials.

“When John was running the church himself, he had a position that he didn’t want to deal with the federal government,” Olson reminded them, speaking with a New York accent hard enough to ricochet off the fire station walls. “John did not want to be involved with the federal government. Doesn’t want to talk to them. Doesn’t want to sign their paperwork.”

Now, though, the church was under new ownership and new leadership. Olson said that the new board of directors had investigated whether to file with the IRS, and they’d arrived at a decision.

“We’re opposed to doing it as well.… The board decided to go with John’s recommendation, that we don’t have to file with the federal government.”

Olson cited IRS regulations that he said showed that active churches didn’t need to be individually recognized, as long as they were engaged in religious activities. He passed around copies of a list of community achievements—such as hosting Bible studies and working with the local Lutheran Ecumenical Council to distribute food to the poor—that he said demonstrated the church’s religious and charitable nature.

In front of the selectboard, in a row of folding chairs, four grim-faced members of the public sat shoulder to shoulder, waiting to speak. They wore the solid-colored tops of women with a common fashion sense—dark purple, light purple, pink, and light green.

Dark Purple was opposed: “You’re going to have a lot more people coming in and asking for the same thing.… Hell, I’ll apply for it, if it’s as easy as this.”

Light Green was also opposed: “From what I know, I actually feel like it’s just a scam. And I don’t appreciate that at all, as someone who’s paying my fair share.”

Light Purple agreed: “It seems to me there’s an ideological conflict. If you won’t recognize the federal government, why should we [support you] recognizing your local government, to take from the taxpayers of the town?”

Pink said that she herself worked with the ecumenical council that Olson cited, and that she doubted Olson’s assertion of an affiliation.

“I don’t believe they’re in it,” she said. (What she did not mention was that Olson didn’t even seem to know the name of the organization, which is the Mascoma Valley Ecumenical Council, and that it’s interdenominational rather than Lutheran.)

Ploszaj leaned back in a folding chair with his arms clasped over the stomach of his clean white T-shirt. He had not yet adopted his “bum look” and instead sported neatly combed hair and a trimmed beard. Speaking with the tight voice of a parent who has been forced to explain himself to his wayward children, he objected to being judged by people who had never come to see the church’s work in person.

“That church is open to everyone,” he told the officials. “Of all faiths or no faiths. If they choose not to enter the door or step onto the property, we will not force them. We will not use force.”

He spread his hands a bit while shrugging, as if the church not physically dragging uninterested people to its on-site activities was a great overlooked virtue.

“I’m being told we must do—must do—things that are not mandatory. That’s all I’m going to say,” he said. Then he immediately said more, delivering the latest in a string of only slightly veiled threats about what would happen if the town continued to try to tax the church.

“We have to go to the next step.… It might be legalese speak. None of us are lawyers, attorneys,” he said.

When it came time for the three selectmen to vote, the first said that he favored the exemption, while the second was opposed. The tiebreaker, wearing a navy blue T-shirt and gray capris, had a blocky head perched on a narrow body, like a Pez dispenser. Though he sounded conflicted, he said that Ploszaj’s talk of legal action “really turned me off.”

“It kind of seems like putting up a cold shoulder to the community,” he said, fidgeting in his seat. He uncrossed and recrossed his arms, waiting for the vote to be called.

With a majority of 2–1, the tax exemption was denied.

THE VOTE PUT Connell back in the same old position. The threat of property seizure hung over his head like the sword of Damocles, held back only by a fraying thread of legal arguments. As part of the Free Towners’ ongoing pattern of taking government officials to court, the church directors were fully prepared to follow through with their threat of a legal battle. They told Connell he needed to be deposed by their lawyers to help them in the upcoming courtroom fight.

Connell considered this directive an insult to his principles—after years of telling the town that he wouldn’t fill out governmental paperwork, why would the directors expect him to reverse course? He reminded the directors that resolving the tax issue was their responsibility. He was opposed to, as he put it, “using government to protect the church from the government.”

Anytime the directors brought up the issue, which was pretty much every time they talked to Connell, he shut the conversation down with a new catchphrase.

“I am relying on God—not men.”

In April, after one of the monthly Sunday church services, the directors held a formal meeting outside the church building. Connell was surprised to find that they had invited a guest to introduce himself—John Redman.

I would eventually come to meet Redman, along with Ploszaj, on the day the ponytailed folk singer slapped his bullets down on the console of my car.

But the board had interest in a different side of Redman, who, like Connell, dabbled in both religious leadership (he had some religious training as a Quaker minister) and protests against the justice system (his favorite target was the police). The board of directors explained that if Redman was installed as a co-pastor, he might be able to help the tax situation by participating in some of the legal proceedings that Connell despised.

Connell, who already knew Redman as a supporter of the church, liked the idea. When the board voted to appoint Redman to the role of co-pastor, Connell sent out a warm, public introduction to church supporters (though, in an unsubtle marking of territory, he described Redman as assistant pastor, rather than co-pastor).

The first warning sign that things might not go well came early. One of Redman’s first acts as co-pastor was what Connell felt was a ridiculously overdramatic display of the right to bear arms with a “very fancy” rifle, right outside the church. Connell didn’t like the whiff of militarism emanating from so close to his massive peace dove painting, but trusting that things would resolve themselves, he held his tongue.

Besides, he had other worldly concerns. Perhaps he had envisioned that his basic needs would be served by the proceeds of the collection plate; if so, that never happened. In October, in a public call for donations, he said that he was unable to pay the church heating bills and was having a difficult time buying food.

“I’ve spent EVERYTHING I had, and I’ve been (for almost 4 ½ years) the UNPAID, FULL-TIME, VOLUTEER [sic] pastor and sexton to get Peaceful Assembly Church this far,” he wrote.

When winter came, intermittent donations allowed Connell to scrape by, but just barely. At times, he said, he was forced to retreat into a small storage space with a ceiling less than four feet tall, because it was the only place in the church where he could get the temperature above 40 degrees.

“But, I am quite OK with suffering a bit to try to keep Peaceful Assembly Church going,” he concluded. In May of 2015, he offered to sell his three favorite guitars to anyone who would offer a fair price.

If the winters were harsh, the long bright days of summers were good to Connell. He liked the way a hiking trail that followed the old railroad tracks running behind the church piped people right past his back door. Connell collected brush and whacked weeds to keep that stretch of the trail looking nice, and he often waylaid walkers with sculptures or face-to-face messages of peace and love. (That year the state of New Hampshire, which had a different definition of “looking nice,” told Connell to remove his art from the public right-of-way along the trail.)

In June, he had an especially good day—working on his Zen garden, tidying up the hiking trail, talking spiritualism to people who came by, one of whom Connell described as being in a crisis. As the sun dipped below the horizon, a few more trail-walkers stopped to chat, and he brought out his guitar.

“Someone told me long ago, there’s a calm before the storm,” he began in his rough voice. “I know! It’s been comin’ for some time.”

Connell’s repertoire of what he called his peace songs was extensive, if tilted toward the years of his youth. He sang on to his small band of listeners, until the only lingering sign of the sun was vestigial warmth rising from the gravel of the rail bed.

When he finally bid them farewell and retired to the church, he was exultant.

“Forgiveness messages delivered—and received,” he concluded, before he collapsed into bed.

Rosalie Babiarz remembered a time when she took some strawberries out of her greenhouse to Connell. Connell loved fruit; he always seemed to associate it with purity and goodness. They sat outside and ate together, savoring the soft seeded hulls and juicy flesh in the gentle sunshine. It was her favorite memory of him.

“He was a happy soul, and he wanted everybody to be happy,” she said. “He wanted everybody to be free.”

It was Connell’s last summer in Grafton.

AS THE SEASON’S warmth ebbed, Connell and the freedom-loving church directors found more areas of disagreement. Though Connell’s own religious activities were distinct from those of mainstream churches, he was aghast at the intermixing of firearms and faith and felt that the directors were drifting away from his central message of peace.

By September, relations had turned so sour and raw that the directors asked Connell to leave the church. He refused.

There were also other conflicts. During an October 5 deposition related to the tax issue, Redman went toe to toe with a friend of the church directors, Dave Kopacz, a baritone-voiced Second Amendment activist from Massachusetts, in the type of aggressive physical posturing that typically precedes a schoolyard fistfight.

Connell, meanwhile, unleashed a public barrage of attacks on Redman—he questioned his co-pastor’s credentials, complained that Redman used the phrase “god-damned,” and said Redman was being driven by “his demons.” He accused Redman of training a laser light scope on the chests of people (which Redman denied) and also brought up the earlier firearms display on church property.

“Is the Peaceful Assembly Church,” Connell asked, “moving from… ‘Peace through Forgiveness’ to ‘Peace through superior fire power’?”

On October 29, he quoted an email in which Redman had fired back at him.

“You seem to have come unhinged,” Redman said. “… You have not had good luck lately, nor managed to make things happen in Grafton.”

Outside the church, Connell posed for a photograph, with no shirt on and a large target painted on his chest, the scarlet bull’s-eye centered over his heart. It was a reference, he said, to Redman’s supposed laser light scope antics.

“The target on my chest is my creative/artistic expression for what may be soon to come,” he wrote to supporters on the freedom forums.

The harder Connell fought for freedom, the tighter the web of constraints drew around him. The days once more grew short and chilly, but he could afford neither propane nor heating oil. He began washing in cold water and wearing layers inside.

A week before Thanksgiving, Connell withdrew $30 from his last bank account. His remaining balance, he announced, was one dollar and one cent.

His war of words with the Free Towners escalated. He now called them “hypocrite takeover artists” to anyone who would listen, in person or in a series of posts on Facebook and the freedom forums.

“I have seen increasing amounts, of glimpses, of fear and hatred in some of the eyes and faces,” he wrote. He accused one director of trying to intimidate him several times by flashing the butt of his concealed handgun.

Three days before Thanksgiving, for the first time that year, the temperature dipped below 20 degrees. The following day it barely got above freezing. Several years earlier, the libertarians had set up Porc411 (named for their iconic self-defense symbol, the porcupine) to connect freedom-lovers across the state.

Now Connell called Porc411 and, in a rambling, six-minute message to the community at large, accused the directors of abandoning the religious mission of the church in a “complete betrayal” of his agreement with them.

“They want a liberty clubhouse,” he said. “They’ve been influenced by some very, very dark forces.”

He said that, despite the cold weather and the oncoming holidays, Ploszaj and Olson were considering changing the locks on the church to force him out.

Connell added that he’d had a change of heart related to the town’s tax liens on the church. Given the choice between the Free Towners or the town, he said, “I will tell the judge that this has been a complete fraud and that the government ought to take this building.”