ABSTRACT
Much of the disregard for the importance of Saint-Simon in the history of sociology is traced to the rejection of the Saint-Simonians’ (a group of Saint-Simon's disciples) misrepresentation of what they considered to be Saint-Simon's model for a new Christian-based society spelled out in Saint-Simon's last published work The New Christianity (1825). The argument presented in this chapter refutes the generally held view that Saint-Simon was an atheist. Instead, Saint-Simon is taken at his word in The New Christianity, and it is proposed that a combination of Saint-Simon's belief in God and his belief that Christianity was of divine origin, along with the distortions of the Saint-Simonians as opposed to Comte's professed atheism, provided the context for the triumph of Comte's vision of sociology as a purely secular and materialistic discipline that now defines contemporary sociology.
