The Power and the Glory

The Power and the Glory is a 1940 novel by British author Graham Greene. The title is an allusion to the doxology often recited at the end of the Lord's Prayer: "For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever, amen." It was initially published in the United States under the title The Labyrinthine Ways. Greene's novel tells the story of a renegade Catholic 'whisky priest' (a term coined by Greene) living in the Mexican state of Tabasco in the 1930s, a time when the Mexican government was attempting to suppress the Catholic Church. That suppression had resulted in the Cristero War (1926–1929), so named for its Catholic combatants' slogan "Viva Cristo Rey ("Long live Christ the King"). In 1941, the novel received the Hawthornden Prize British literary award. In 2005, it was chosen by TIME magazine as one of the hundred best English-language novels since 1923. Plot During the period when Catholicism was outlawed in Mexico, the state of Tabasco enforces the ban rigorously, while many other states follow a don't-ask-don't-tell policy. But in Radical Socialist Tabasco, priests have been settled by the state with wives (breaking celibacy) and pensions in exchange for their renouncing the faith and being strictly banned from fulfilling pastoral functions. Those who refuse are on the run and liable to be shot.