A Religion Designed on Purpose

Auguste Comte concluded that a society could not hold together on scientific philosophy alone and that what it needed was a religion, so he designed one. The Religion of Humanity has an object of worship, the Great Being, meaning the whole community of human beings past, present and future considered as a single continuing entity to which every individual owes what they are. It has a priesthood, a calendar of thirteen months with each month and each day dedicated to a person who contributed to human progress, and a set of sacraments marking the stages of a life from presentation after birth to incorporation into the Great Being after death.

Comte set this out in the Catechism of Positive Religion in 1852, and Gertrud Lenzer's edition of his writings presents both the earlier scientific philosophy and the later religious system, which many of his own followers regarded as incompatible. The chapel on the Rue Payenne in the Marais was established in 1881 under Pierre Laffitte, Comte's designated successor, as the place where this designed religion was actually conducted, with services on the Positivist calendar and commemoration of the Great Being. It is one of the very few cases in the atlas of a religion whose founder wrote down the whole apparatus in advance, from the object of worship to the order of service, and whose followers then had to decide whether to perform it.