The Power and the Glory The Power and the Glory The Power and the Glory (1940) is a 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 Roman 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
The Power and the Glory persecution of the Catholic Church was especially severe in the province of Tabasco, under anti-clerical governor Tomás Garrido Canabal. His campaign succeeded in closing all the churches in the state. It forced the priests to marry and give up their traditional garb. Greene called it the "fiercest persecution of religion anywhere since the reign of Elizabeth." He chronicled his travels in Tabasco in "The Lawless Roads", published in 1939. In that generally hostile account of his visit he wrote "That, I think, was the day I began to hate the Mexicans" and at another point described his "growing depression, almost