Weapons training was response to ‘assaults, vandalism, and threats,’ says group’s lawyer
By Jack Styler
Apr 1, 2026
ALTON, N.H. — Standing in mud at his private gun range in New Hampshire, Richard Pugsley aimed an AR-15-style rifle at a close-range target resembling a human torso. The nine men on either side of him did the same while their instructor, Jared Ross, a former Green Beret, walked behind them, giving instructions.
Community of Jesus leader Richard Pugsley, second from front, using an AR-15-style rifle in New Hampshire. (Screenshot from Lodestone Training and Consulting Instagram page)
For three days in September 2022, the men practiced shooting for more than six hours a day. The shots rang out across Lake Winnipesaukee, angering neighbors who called the police to complain.
The shooters were all residents of the Community of Jesus (CoJ), the Rock Harbor, Orleans enclave. Pugsley, 59, who organized the firearms training, is the “sub-prior” or second-in-command at the CoJ, according to a federal lawsuit filed by a former resident, Oliver Ortolani. He is also the community’s director of security and the conductor of its Gloriae Dei Cantores choir.
Pugsley hired Jared Ross’s company, Lodestone Training and Consulting, to teach members of the CoJ how to use firearms between 2022 and 2024, according to former residents of the enclave and photos posted to Lodestone’s social media accounts.
Pugsley did not respond to requests for comment from the Independent. Ross declined to comment.
Jeffrey Robbins, a partner in the firm of Saul Ewing, who is the CoJ’s lawyer, wrote in an email to the Independent that “security training” was the group’s response to “assaults, vandalism, bullying and threats to which the Community and some of its members have been subjected, in part thanks to the kind of stuff which you publish.”
Robbins distanced his clients from the sessions with guns, however. “The Community does not sponsor, organize or fund firearms training,” he wrote. “As to what individual members of the Community do or do not do in terms of being trained on firearms, the Community cannot say.”
But several former residents and one current resident of the CoJ said that the intensive security measures at the enclave were part of a longstanding and pervasive climate of fear there related to a belief in the coming “end times.” Its leaders, these sources said, acted on the belief that the group was likely to be attacked by gangs from Boston because they are Christians.
In defending the security training, lawyer Robbins cited an incident in December 2024 when a man vandalized a nativity scene at the CoJ and told the police he had wanted to “send a message” to CoJ residents by leaving a knife he had used to stab the baby Jesus figure, according to the police report. Robbins also sent a screenshot of a Facebook post threatening to burn the CoJ “to the ground,” and claimed that he, CoJ member Christopher Kanaga, and others had received telephone threats.
The man who vandalized the nativity scene was prosecuted and ordered by the court to see a psychiatrist and to stay away from the CoJ.
Orleans Police Chief Scott MacDonald confirmed that vandalism had occurred at the CoJ in the past. MacDonald said he had met with Christopher Kanaga and his brother, Clint Kanaga, last fall to discuss “security protocols” after the Ortolani lawsuit was filed.
“I would imagine they feel threatened in some way,” said MacDonald. “Is that justified or not? I don’t know.” The chief also said that if there had been any “legitimate threat” to the CoJ or its residents, “we would be aware of that.”
Several former residents of the CoJ identified Clint Kanaga as the man standing next to Richard Pugsley in a photo of them shooting rifles in New Hampshire. Neither of the Kanagas mentioned firearms training in their meeting, said Chief MacDonald.
Fearing an Attack
Five former residents and one current resident of the CoJ interviewed for this article told a different story about the reasons for ramped-up security at the enclave. They said that the group’s leaders were worried about being attacked by gangs from Boston if Donald Trump did not win the 2024 presidential election. COJ leaders began preparing residents to defend their compound or evacuate it, according to these sources.
The CoJ security team meeting with Lodestone Training and Consulting in Pennsylvania. (Screenshot from Lodestone Training and Consulting Instagram page)
The sources all said that the security measures were excessive and corresponded to growing Christian nationalist beliefs inside the CoJ. All six asked not to be named because they fear retribution from the group, including against family members who still live there.
One recently departed resident said that she began to feel a sense of panic because of the intense security measures before the 2024 election. She said that Karen Moore, the group’s leader or “prioress,” and Betty Pugsley, the group’s former leader, were promoting Christian nationalist ideas, and that influenced her decision to leave the enclave. Moore and Richard Pugsley took over leadership of the CoJ in 2021, according to several former members and state documents.
Starting in 2022, Pugsley and a group of 10 to 12 men who made up the CoJ’s “security team” learned to shoot guns, including AR-15-style semi-automatic rifles, on Pugsley’s property in New Hampshire, according to a former resident with firsthand knowledge of the training.
Photos posted on the Lodestone Training and Consulting social media pages, letters sent from a CoJ resident to one of Pugsley’s New Hampshire neighbors, and records from the Alton Police Dept. confirm that Pugsley and others from the CoJ conducted firearms classes in New Hampshire.
The first known session appears to have occurred over the weekend of July 8, 2022, according to photos reviewed by the Independent. Pugsley hosted two more sessions that fall — one with semi-automatic rifles from Sept. 13 to 15 and a “private pistol basic” class from Oct. 11 to 13, according to letters sent by Kirsti Pfeiffer, Pugsley’s daughter, warning neighbors about the noise.
The neighbors grew upset. On at least three occasions, they complained about the noise to the Alton police or Belknap County sheriff’s department. Once, a neighbor got into a physical altercation with Pugsley’s son, Alex Pugsley, after a September firearms class, according to police records and interviews with neighbors.
After these clashes with neighbors, Pugsley and the CoJ security team decided to move their training with Lodestone to Pennsylvania, according to the former resident with firsthand knowledge of the events.
A post on the Lodestone page from Sept. 18, 2024 shows a group of men standing around a table. The caption reads, in part, “We’ve been spending the week with a private security team. The big focus so far has been mission planning and running different scenarios.”
In the photos, the men’s eyes are obscured by “censor bars.” Five people, however, who used to live at the CoJ and knew the men agreed on the identities of all but one of those standing around the table. They are Richard Pugsley, Hans Spatzeck-Olsen, Tim McKendree, John Jordan, Dan Pfeiffer, a blond man known as “Brother Paul,” Alex Pugsley, Chris Vought, and Dane Spatzeck-Olsen, according to the former residents.
None of the men in the photo responded to the Independent’s requests for comment.
Politics and Prepping
Cay Andersen and Judy Sorensen, who founded the Community of Jesus in 1970 and were known as the original “Mothers,” believed that the “end times” were coming and instructed CoJ residents and members to prepare by buying survival gear and food stocks starting as early as the 1970s, according to several former residents including Carrie Buddington and Susan Wilkins.
But in 2021, when Karen Moore and Richard Pugsley took over CoJ leadership from Betty Pugsley, who had led the group for three decades after the Mothers’ tenure ended, they instilled a renewed focus on preparing for national upheaval, according to the five former residents and one current resident who spoke to the Independent.
During that time, leaders began promoting the teachings of people they called modern-day “prophets” like Dutch Sheets and Lance Wallnau, two of the former COJ members said.
Both Sheets and Wallnau are associated with Christian nationalist movements like the Seven Mountain Mandate and the New Apostolic Reformation, which the Southern Poverty Law Center described as “a new and powerful Christian supremacy movement that is attempting to transform culture and politics in the U.S. and countries across the world into a grim authoritarianism.”
Sheets has promoted the use of a pine tree flag with the words “An Appeal to Heaven.” The flag was carried by rioters on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol and was observed at Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s vacation home in New Jersey.
At least four buildings on the CoJ campus in Rock Harbor have also flown the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, according to images on Google Maps Street View from 2024.
Lawyer Jeffrey Robbins told the Independent that in the 32 years he has represented the CoJ he has never heard anyone mention Christian nationalism. He cited members’ donations to the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League in discounting any association with Christian supremacy.
One former resident of the CoJ told the Independent that its leaders worried about “the end of the world” and espoused “QAnon-type conspiracies,” including concern that a mass blackout across the U.S. could cause gangs from Boston to target the group for their wealth or because they are Christians.
During this period, CoJ residents bought rifles and handguns, the former resident said, but “purchases were deliberately spread out from different locations so that it wouldn’t look odd.”
According to the Mass. Firearms License Applicants database, new applications dramatically increased in Orleans over the last six years, peaking in 2020, 2021, and 2024.
Security preparation intensified at the beginning of 2024, according to the five former residents and one current resident. During that time, the group was split into teams, each with its own responsibility during an attack, including taking care of older residents, converting recently constructed concrete walls six feet deep in the ground into barricades using military-grade gabions, and identifying “sniper positions” on the roof of the CoJ “chapter house.” Every resident also had to have a “go bag” with warm clothing, medicines, toiletries, and other supplies in case they had to move quickly on foot, said the former residents. One said CoJ leaders warned that former members of the group could “snap” and come “shoot the place up.”
“It was like, if we’re prepared, God will honor that, and probably nothing will ever happen,” he said. “But if we’re not prepared, then we leave ourselves vulnerable to him allowing something to happen because we weren’t ready.”
Living outside the CoJ has made him realize that the enclave’s leaders used fear as “a means of control.”
“I’ve realized, in hindsight, the biggest thing I feel free from is that driving sense of fear underneath everything,” he said.
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