Concept
Religious humanism or ethical humanism is an integration of nontheistic humanist ethical philosophy with congregational rites and community activity which center on human needs, interests, and abilities. Self-described religious humanists differ from secular humanists mainly in that they regard the nontheistic humanist life stance as a non-supernatural "religion" and organising using a congregational model. Religious humanists typically organise in the 21st century under the umbrella of Ethical Culture or Ethical Humanism. It remains largely a United States phenomenon; a British ethical culture movement was briefly highly active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but by the 1960s had largely abandoned its "religious" trappings, and asserted humanism less as a religious identity and more as a useful label to describe rational and non-religious attitudes to morality and ethics. Ethical Culture and religious humanism groups first formed in the United States from Unitarian ministers who, not believing in god, sought to build a secular religion influenced by the thinking of French philosopher Auguste Comte. In the late 20th century the Humanist movement came into conflict with conservative Christian groups in the United States . "Secular humanism" has become the most popular form of organized Humanism. However, the American Humanist Association notes that it largely emerged from Ethical Culture, Unitarianism and Universalism. The Cult of Reason (Culte de la Raison) was an atheist philosophy devised during the French Revolution by Jacques Hébert, Pierre Gaspard Chaumette and their supporters. In 1793 during the French Revolution, the cathedral Notre Dame de Paris was turned into a Temple to Reason and for a time Lady Liberty replaced the Virgin Mary on several altars. In the 1850's, Auguste Comte, the Father of Sociology, founded Positivism, a "religion of humanity". Auguste Comte was a student and secretary for Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon, the Father of French Socialism. Auguste Comte coined the term "altruism".