Holyland Christian Commune Was Hell For Some

EMELLE, Ala. - It's hard to see heaven from the Christian commune they call the Holyland.

It is a dusty, threadbare spot - home and workplace for 70 adults and 80 children. There is little to suggest that it is the heart of a business empire worth nearly $6.5 million, built by poor blacks.

"This is the work of Christianity," says Luke Edwards, the 71-year-old preacher who founded the Holyland and who is praised widely as a latter-day Moses. "I've seen what welfare has done to my people. This is welfare reform."

But Edwards' Holyland is not all it seems.

Edwards dismisses welfare, but food stamps helped build the organization, and Holyland residents receive government-subsidized food and health care. He preaches self-reliance, but the Holyland depends on revenues from an elaborate, cross-country program of begging.

He sermonizes on the importance of following the example of Jesus' Apostles - but his Holyland has been hit with repeated lawsuits, $1.3 million in court judgments, child-labor fines and claims of sexual improprieties.

Edwards says his critics are lying and are like Jesus' persecutors: jealous and deceitful, threatened by black economic power, unmoved by the dream.

The dream has been with Edwards since the Great Depression.

He grew up in the north Alabama town of Florence, where segregation was the law and poverty was life. Edwards shared a room with seven brothers and sisters. One night, when he was 7 or 8, he said his prayers and drifted off.

"I went to sleep and had a vision that my father turned the farm over to me," he remembers. "I got my brothers and sisters together and told them, `We can stop the landlord from taking everything we make.'

"We went to the inner city and sold plums and berries. All we had to give the landlord was the rent, and we had everything we needed."

The plan

Edwards grew up. It was in Detroit that he laid out his plan.

He took over a church in Meridian, 40 miles west of where the Holyland would be established, in the mid-1970s. Edwards convinced his church members they had a ladder to climb out of poverty: food stamps.

Edwards opened a small store in the church at Meridian and received authorization to take food stamps.

Within months, the store was joined by a supermarket, three convenience stores and a Laundromat. In a few years, the organization started buying land in Alabama.

Today, it owns three motels, four restaurants, a small slaughterhouse, three stores, a cattle feedlot, a hog farm, an airplane, 2,800 acres of land, several limousines and two garages.

The Holyland itself consists of a 54-acre compound - seven plain wooden buildings, three mobile homes and several sheds.

Most residents come from the church in Meridian, but some troubled youths are brought by relatives. Mississippi courts once referred children to Edwards, but the practice stopped several years ago as questions arose about his methods.

There are no drugs, alcohol or tobacco, and women wear no makeup. Contact with outsiders is limited. Everything is shared, including clothes. Parents and children are separated; Edwards says the family of faith is all that matters.

"They're in very good health," said Dr. Sandral Hullett, director of West Alabama Health Services, a federally funded agency that provides low-cost health care and food vouchers for the Holylanders.

A strict, unhappy existence

Holyland is recalled as an unhappy place by Tony Williams, who lived there from early childhood into his teens. There were harsh punishments. He remembers being whipped; he remembers being denied food; he remembers lonely boys crying in the middle of the night.

Reveille is at 4 a.m. Adults come through the dorms turning on lights, rousing youngsters from beds where as many as three sleep at a time. There are chores, then breakfast in the cafeteria.

From 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., children ages 8 to 18 go to Christ Temple Academy, the Holyland's one-room school. Preschoolers, all wearing red tops, are in another building.

Students sit at long tables completing photocopied sheets, their work areas separated by partitions. There is no discussion, no laughter. Some children look up as strangers enter, but most heads stay bowed.

Many older students begin "vocational training" at age 16; they go to work in one of the Holyland's numerous businesses.

"There's nowhere else I can manage a motel at 19 or 20. There's nowhere else I can decide I want to fly and take flying lessons," said Tina Lipsey, 25, who pilots the group's airplane, a four-seat Cessna.

But the results of the Holyland's austere educational program are mixed. Children placed in public schools after leaving the compound were about three years behind, according to notes from a 1993 meeting of state officials concerned about the Holyland.

Labor violations

A state probe found 129 child-labor violations, with children as young as 14 doing construction work and slaughtering cattle. Edwards said he was unaware of the law and now complies with it.

Holyland residents receive only room and board for their work. A few outside employees are paid, but not always enough. Federal inspectors seven years ago ordered a Holyland restaurant to reimburse employees $27,000 in unpaid overtime, but bankruptcy shielded the group; it paid only $9,600.

`The Route'

The Holyland's businesses are not its only moneymaker. There is also the group's nationwide panhandling system, known as "The Route."

Vanloads of adults and children are sent on the road for weeks at a time to ask for money outside stores.

Gail Walker, who left the Holyland with her three children in 1994, said the begging always is in the name of helping abused children.

"If you use the words `abused children,' it gets their hearts," said Walker, who once collected $1,800 in a week.

While church members once sold peanuts outside area stores, panhandling proved effective, too. Former residents estimate revenues of more than $300,000 a month, a total far higher than the official tally. Reach Inc. claimed only $156,924 in annual income in 1991.

Edwards defends the solicitations. All proceeds, he says, go to youths living at the compound.

You want to believe this friendly little man in work clothes. A cowboy hat on his head and a Mississippi GOP membership card in his wallet, Edwards makes strangers feel like friends.

To his flock, he is an awesome presence. Members call each other brother or sister, but Edwards is always "the bishop" or simply "he."

But some see a more sinister side.

Allegations abound

Former Holyland resident Gloria Roberts won a $650,000 verdict after filing suit, accusing Edwards of mind control and trying to seduce her.

The allegations were similar to those of former members and some of Edwards' relatives, including daughter Brenda Garris, who say he has added to his flock by fathering dozens of children by Holyland women. Edwards denies having any of his 18 children out of wedlock.

Many who dwelled in the Holyland have left, but Edwards can't recall the name of anyone who departed on good terms.

Phillip Williams, a founding member of Reach and its first president, lived at the compound with his family, but moved out after only a year.

He tired, he said, of seeing people work like slaves for nothing but a place to live.

"I have a lot of admiration and respect for the bishop," Williams said. "I'm just saying there's a better way."