Templo positivista, Porto Alegre
It wasn’t – at least not in France or England. An intriguing twist of the plot is that all aspects of Comte’s Positive philosophy, and particularly the political and religious aspects, were much more successful in the colonies than in Europe. It spread among the educated middle-classes of India and Bengal, seeing in it a programme for attaining the same august level of development as the European states had achieved. In Brazil Comtean Positivism even became the leading ideology and philosophy of the republican revolution (read: coup) of 1889 (the national motto, Ordem e Progresso, builds on his ideas). The Religion of Humanity even became something of a state religion, and there are still active temples left in Brazil to this day.
All in all, however, Comte’s Religion of Humanity failed. It nevertheless occupies a fascinating position in the history of “irreligious religious movements”, organized secularism, freethinking, agnostic, atheist and humanist groups.
References:
Campbell, Colin. 1971. Towards a Sociology of Irreligion. London: Macmillan
Olson, Richard G. 2008. Science and Scientism in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Wright, T. R. The Religion of Humanity: The Impact of Comtean Positivism in Victorian Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
(Further references can be found in the above works.)