The Place was a Christian group that met in inner-city Chicago to help people on the streets come to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. The people that ran the place were all raptured, leaving those that attended but never became believers behind. Its attendees eventually became believers and continued to live in Chicago even after it was devastated, although they moved underground for their safety when they heard that the city was irradiated. They describe themselves as former "pimps, whores, crack heads, drunks, players, hustlers, mothers with no husbands, and children with no fathers"; they take this description in stride as the Dramatic Audio of Desecration has Enoch Dumas using the language of 1 Corinthians 6:11: "and such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of God".
Its current group leader, Enoch Dumas, revealed the truth to Chloe Williams when she found out about The Place in Desecration. They and the Tribulation Force members left Chicago prior to its destruction by a nuclear missile in The Remnant, but the ministry continued elsewhere in Illinois to reach out to people who like them were down on their luck. After they evacuated Chicago, they had approximately 30 people (Enoch says "thirty one" when Chloe first met them), but they managed to have nearly a hundred just before the Glorious Appearing. Despite the group being overt in their witness to find those without Carpathia's mark, most of them managed to avoid being detected and caught by the Global Community although a few of them were martyred. During the months before the Glorious Appearing, Pastor Dumas lived in a basement of an abandoned house in Palos Hills and slept on a musty mattress.
In Left Behind: The Kids, after the Global Community raiding force led by Kruno Fulcire destroyed the encampment in Avery, Wisconsin in The Road to War, many of the Young Tribulation Force who escaped with a warning from Mark Eisman went to live with the congregation of The Place. In The Road to War, Darrion Stahley described them as "former prostitutes and druggies" who are "sweet people" and who "know what it means to be forgiven". At the time, The Place had more than seventy members.
A Critical View[]
In Andrew Strombeck's "Invest in Jesus: Neoliberalism and the Left Behind Novels", he characterizes the Tribulation Force as residing in both the survivialist "militia compound" and suburban "gated community". The Tribulation Force represent a neoliberal, globe-trotting professional, managerial class who through their innate ability and hard work are at the top of their professions and can compete and frustrate the machinations of the Global Community. Even someone such as Gustaf Zuckermandel, Jr. who have a informal and amateur set of skills, had been "professionalized" since he is adept at providing a specific service to the Tribulation Force in a morally acceptable fashion. The Tribulation Force are tech-savvy professionals who avail themselves of every technological advantage to remain secure, such as solar-powered wireless laptops, satellite telephones, and sports-utility vehicles such as the Range Rover. In contrast, the members of The Place are the inner city underclass with few marketable skills and have none of the perquisites of professional accomplishment and wealth.
(In the Dramatic Audio of Desecration, just before Leon Fortunato issues the proclamation that the everyone has to worship the image three times a day, Enoch Dumas offers "tangible" help to the Tribulation Force. He says that The Place are a "collection of fresh-faces with street smarts, a backlog of energy, and a collection of skills y'all likely don't possess". He says that they have to oil up some of the old skills, such as being a 'top-rate pickpocket' but that would be 'a fitting testimony to the grace of God'". Rayford Steele expresses some appreciation for the offer.)
In the adult novels, the characters of The Place is the only attempt to represent the "urban Other", but in other books, they present them as having a propensity towards "looting" and associate them with social pathologies. For example, in Left Behind, when Rayford says that his VCR and TV were stolen, Bruce Barnes said, "It's as if the inner city has moved the suburbs". The books portray one aspect of the apocalypse as an "intensification of contemporary social problems". Strombeck says that the books have trouble differentiating between the "suffering non-Christians" and the "members of the Antichrist's organization". The characters of The Place were separated from the protagonists as Chloe Williams had to venture outside the security of the Chicago safe house in order to find them. But the story ironically affirms the motif that interaction with the inner city "Other" brings calamity and posed a threat to the Tribulation Force since the occasion of The Place characters "moving with the Trib Force was the first step of compromising the safe house" (Armageddon, chapter 3). Strombeck says, "If, at the book's beginning, characters fret about the inner city moving to the suburbs, when the inner city moves to the safe house, the results are just as bad".
Strombeck thinks the way that the authors depict the people of The Place is in a patronizing, stereotypical manner. Strombeck also says that portrayal of The Place seems to be an endorsement of the conservative Christians' preferred, privatized solution to inner city problems, such as the George W. Bush Administration's "faith-based initiatives".
Known Members of The Place[]
- Enoch Dumas, its group leader
- Carmela
- Shaniqua
- Florence
- Adrian (From The Road to War)