Journal of Bentham Studies Article Jeremy Bentham on Organised Religion Peter Lythe1,* How to cite: Lythe, P. ‘Jeremy Bentham on Organised Religion’. Journal of Bentham Studies, 2021, 19(1), pp. 1–36. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.2045-757X.049. Submission date: 17 December 2020; Acceptance date: 11 March 2021; Publication date: 17 June 2021 Peer Review: This article has been peer reviewed through the journal’s standard double-blind peer-review, where both the reviewers and authors are anonymized during review. Copyright: © 2021, The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY) 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited • DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.2045-757X.049. Open Access: Journal of Bentham Studies is a peer-reviewed open-access journal. *Correspondence:
[email protected] 1UCL, UK Jeremy Bentham on Organised Religion Peter Lythe 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 enor- mous sums of money from the population, instituted a fraudulent educa- tion 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.