Abstract
Bentham’s attack on organised religion was principally an attack on the ‘Church-of-Englandist’ ruling few, and, in particular, the ecclesiastical establishment. This article will examine Bentham’s argument that the ecclesiastical establishment fostered and exploited religious belief, as well as the hopes and fears associated with popular religiosity, in the pursuit of ‘sinister interest’. Bentham recognised a senior clergy that extorted enormous sums of money from the population, instituted a fraudulent education system that subjugated the children committed to its charge, and took advantage of the corrupt alliance of Church and state in order to advance and protect its worldly power and riches. This article will discuss Bentham’s proposals to sweep away the mischiefs done by organised religion, both to morality and to good government, and will argue that Bentham’s hostility towards the ecclesiastical establishment did not prevent him from recommending that priests be stripped of their power, place and exorbitant wealth as gradually and as painlessly as possible. It will also explain why Bentham thought that liberating religious belief from the coercive control of a self-serving class of men would be more conducive to personal happiness than prohibiting religion altogether.
Highlights
Church-of-Englandism and its Catechism Examined was printed in 1817 under the pseudonym ‘An Oxford Graduate’, and was published early the following year under Jeremy Bentham’s own name.1 Its excoriation of the Church of England made a formidable contribution to Bentham’s broader project to undermine the political, legal and ecclesiastical establishment in England.2 At the beginning of the ‘Preface on Publication’ to Church-ofEnglandism, Bentham referred to Plan of Parliamentary Reform (1817) – his critique of the prevailing political system, and a declaration of his radical intent – in the character of a companion volume
This article will examine Bentham’s argument that the ecclesiastical establishment fostered and exploited religious belief, as well as the hopes and fears associated with popular religiosity, in the pursuit of ‘sinister interest’
The immediate target of Church-of-Englandism, was the Church-sponsored education system that taught the Catechism – the schools of the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church in England and Wales, which Bentham decried as a cynical means of recruiting and subjugating lay members
Summary
Church-of-Englandism and its Catechism Examined was printed in 1817 under the pseudonym ‘An Oxford Graduate’, and was published early the following year under Jeremy Bentham’s own name. Its excoriation of the Church of England made a formidable contribution to Bentham’s broader project to undermine the political, legal and ecclesiastical establishment in England. At the beginning of the ‘Preface on Publication’ to Church-ofEnglandism, Bentham referred to Plan of Parliamentary Reform (1817) – his critique of the prevailing political system, and a declaration of his radical intent – in the character of a companion volume. As well as functioning to conceal that practice from public scrutiny, the ‘ultimate object’ of the National Society, Bentham contended, was to help preserve from reformation the abuses with which the ecclesiastical establishment was replete.5 Not least among these was the clergy’s extraction of vast sums of money from the population, often in the absence of any meaningful service given in return. After closely examining this and other abuses in the extensive Appendices to Churchof-Englandism, Bentham set out proposals for the eventual dissolution of the ecclesiastical class and the disestablishment of the English Church as part of a radical programme of reform. Bentham knew that by freeing religion from the grip of the ecclesiastical establishment, religious belief would become susceptible to the judgement of people acting in their own interests and deciding whether or not being a religious believer, or ‘religionist’, was conducive to their personal happiness
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