Christ Temple, The Little Church That Works -- Congregation Operates Farms, Plant, School

EMELLE, Ala. - Bishop Luke Edwards, wearing a cowboy hat and boots, walks through a flock of small children, preaching a philosophy of hard-working self-help that has built a small church-owned empire of restaurants, meat-packing plants, farms and a private school.

"Hey, bishop," one child says, starting a ripple effect among the 140 students of Christ Temple Academy. "Hey, bishop." A tiny girl stops him and hugs his legs.

The mothers of some of the children are visible on the 55-acre campus in Alabama's rural Sumter County, but it's hard to tell which are their children. "See that woman with that little girl? You'd think that's her baby, but it's not," Edwards said.

An 82-year-old woman sits in front of her apartment watching the youngsters play. "Every one of those children's mine," said Annie Lee McWilliams. Her 86-year-old husband is helping to build a new dormitory on the farm.

Children, their parents and the elderly all live on the farm with its separate apartments for boys, girls, married couples, single men and single women.

Everyone eats in the cafeteria, and the children study in a school building where each student has a cubicle. Each works with his or her own curriculum, while teachers pace down the aisle. Students put a tiny U.S. flag in a peg if they want to take a break.

ALL ADULTS WORK

While the children attend school, the adults work. Men driving a truck of hay pass through to feed the cattle that graze near the school. Others work in the greenhouse or in the office building, which has the word "Holyland" painted on its side.

When Edwards became pastor of Christ Temple Church just across the state line in Meridian, Miss., 21 years ago, the congregation was almost entirely unemployed, he said.

"Before we bought a farm, 96 percent of my people were on welfare," he said.

The first project Edwards undertook was starting a grocery store in the church where his members could spend their food stamps. By pooling resources, members realized they had financial power, Edwards said. In four months the church grocery had enough money to buy a supermarket, which members stocked, worked at without pay and patronized themselves. That led to buying fried-chicken restaurants.

Then Christ Temple Church sold the restaurant and grocery businesses to buy farmland. These days, all of the church's 200 members work at business operations, farms and the school owned by Reach Inc., a ministry of the church.

AUTO PARTS AND A GARAGE

Residents of Greene County to the east can buy car parts at the Autovalue store in Eutaw, have their cars repaired at the garage next door and walk to South Fork Restaurant for a meal. All those businesses are owned by the church, as are South Fork Deli in Livingston and South Fork Pizza Kitchen in York.

Is it a matter of going from welfare to utopia? Holyland isn't without its problems.

In June 1990, the Alabama Department of Industrial Relations found 129 violations of labor law involving 53 children, said James Cogdell, the agency official in charge of child-labor oversight.

Violations included children working without employment certificates, minors under 14 working at prohibited labor and children working during school hours or before 7 a.m. and after 7 p.m. in violation of state child-labor law, Cogdell said.

Edwards said his operations now comply with what he calls overly restrictive labor laws. He said he will abide by the law now that he knows it - but, "I don't want to raise them looking to welfare," he said. "I want to teach them about work, how important it is."

Though he presides over considerable wealth, Edwards' lifestyle is beyond reproach, said Barry Walker, a church deacon. Edwards lives with his wife in a 20-foot Starcraft camping trailer in the middle of the Holyland farm.

`LEAVES WITH NOTHING'

"Everything he has, we bought him," Walker said. "A leader first has to be an example. Nothing is in his name. His name is not on checks. If he leaves, he leaves with nothing, like me."

"What I do is what I think all black leaders should do," Edwards said. "I don't sit back and blame the government for not making jobs for our people."

Edwards said he and his church members get no salary. The church and its business interests are run as a commune - members live in church-supplied housing, drive used church-owned cars and eat food and groceries supplied by the church, he says. All money earned goes into a community treasury.

"The church meets needs," Edwards said. "We try to live humbly, as people should."

Denise Chapman, who grew up the 19th of 20 children in a New York City family, heard about Edwards' work from a church she attended in Ypsilanti, Mich., that is also an Apostolic Pentecostal congregation like Christ Temple.

The single mother on welfare came to visit Christ Temple and joined the church 12 years ago, moving into church housing with her children. She started work washing dishes in the restaurants and bagging meat in the packing plants. Eventually she worked her way up to manager and took turns running both meat-packing plants. Now she is office manager at Holyland in Emelle and oversees the three restaurants in Alabama.

Reach Inc. taught her job skills when she had none and is doing the same for her children, she said.

The oldest of Chapman's three children is 16.

"I can't think of a better place in the world for him to be," she said. "They will have a skill for the workplace by the time they grow up."

Edwards said persecution of his group has gone on for years because of his political stance.

"We've been called Jim Jones, Moonies, slave labor - just about everything you can think of to stop us," he said.

As a black Republican preaching against welfare, airing controversial views on a radio program in Meridian for 20 years, he made enemies, he said.

"I hurt a lot of people, some black and some white, because welfare's a big business," Edwards said.

`YOU'VE GOT TO WORK'

"There's a lot of preachers preaching that the federal government owes you something. I believe you've got to work and earn a living.

"Sure, there's racism," Edwards said. "But how do we bring it to an end? By forcing somebody to do something for us? No. By becoming producers and knowing how to spend our money."

Chapman says Edwards' system works. She says critics can attack his philosophy, but not his results.

"I've seen too many success stories and too many lives changed," she said. "Including my own."