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 suppress the Catholic Church. That suppression had resulted in the Cristero War (1927-1929), 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. The main character is an unnamed 'whisky priest', who combines a great power for self-destruction with pitiful cravenness, an almost painful penitence, and a desperate quest for dignity. By the end, though, the priest "acquires a real holiness." The other principal character is