You're on the run from the law. Soldiers and police hunt you. If they catch you, they will kill you. They've already murdered innocent people suspected of hiding you. For what crime do they want you dead, you ask? For being a priest. And you're the last one!

[End dramatic movie trailer voice]

No, this isn't the newest hit action movie. Far from it! This is the life of the unnamed priest in British author Graham Greene's acclaimed novel, The Power and the Glory. Set in a southern Mexican state during the 1930s, the novel tells the story of a vice-ridden runaway priest, a tenacious police lieutenant who hunts him, and the inhabitants of the land whose lives are altered by the chase. It's sort of like The Fugitive with a drunken Harrison Ford and a lot of religion thrown in.

You see, this was a time and a place in which being an active priest was a crime punishable by death. Wait…what? Yep, you read that right. The Roman Catholic Church, once the official religion of Mexico, had been suppressed by the government. Why? Control, mainly. The church and the state each had their ideas about how society ought to be run, and their ideas didn't dance to the same beat. They didn't just step on each other's toes—they stomped on them.

Adding insult to injury, the fugitive priest is hardly a hero. He's called a "whisky priest"—a derogatory term for morally weak or corrupt clergy. This priest drinks a lot, as you'd expect, but he's also cowardly and unrepentant for many of his mortal sins. He's not the stuff martyrs are made of, to put it kindly.

The novel, published in 1940, is widely praised as a masterful work of literature. Time Magazine named it one of the best English language novels since 1923.  It has been adapted for both film and television, with legends such as Lawrence Olivier and Henry Fonda in the lead role.

Greene was a Catholic convert, but his novel drew criticism and even (gasp!) condemnation from the Vatican, which demanded he revise the offending aspects. Greene responded that his publisher held the copyright, he made no changes, and the controversy faded. Oh well. The perils of life before Twitter and 24 hour cable news. If it happened today we'd have kept that scandal going for a long while.

Anyhow, if you enjoy taking a leisurely stroll through the intersection of politics, religion, and scandalous personalities—all within a tense cat-and-mouse thriller—then you can't go wrong with The Power and the Glory.

Tuned in to cable news lately? Scanned your Twitter feed? Eyeballed posts by that Facebook friend who never tires of politics? If you answered "Yes" to any of these questions, then you probably know there's an escalating controversy in the United States about the meaning and limits of religious freedom—which is just as much a can of worms now as it was then.

Companies have objected to requirements in the new healthcare law that they offer insurance coverage for birth control, bakers have refused to make cakes for same-sex weddings (Let them eat cake!), and some aren't sure whether or not it's appropriate to recite the full pledge of allegiance—not everyone trusts in God, after all. No doubt these conflicts will continue as these issues are worked out in the courts and public opinion.

All controversy aside, however, we're pretty lucky we even get to have these debates in the first place. In other places of the world today, practicing the wrong religion can get you a death sentence. That's the world of The Power and the Glory.

Clergy are hunted and executed. Churches are destroyed. Religious books and public prayers are outlawed. Owning a religious statue can get you thrown in prison for a night. Displaying The Da Vinci Code or Left Behind on your bookshelf wouldn't be too wise either. Heck, even a VeggieTales video could put you in a pickle. Holy persecution, Batman!

The novel realistically captures all this, yes, but it's more concerned with the people involved, their motivations and internal struggles, and the affects the suppression of the Church has on them. Its characters might not all have names, but they're all very much people. No aliens here, folks. Or talking dogs, for that matter. Sorry, Clifford.

The novel's antagonist is capable of murder, but his anger at the Church is understandable and not entirely unjustified. The hero is seldom heroic and often guilty of the hypocrisies that so rile up his oppressors. Greene doesn't get preachy about all this persecution. He keeps it real.

Well now, that's complicated. What's Greene painting with these shades of grey? One. Provocative. Picture. The Power and the Glory challenges us to consider the individuals involved in religious suppression as complicated people, not as cartoon heroes and villains. It blurs the line between saints and sinners.

A discomforting thought? We think so. Whatever else we can say about Greene, he wasn't looking for universal affirmation.

But we like him anyway.