In his early career, Andrews Norton helped to establish liberal Unitarianism in New England, and stridently opposed harshly conservative
Calvinism and
Trinitarianism. Nevertheless, later in life, he became the chief conservative
Unitarian opponent of
Transcendentalism. As a vocal and well-published theologian, he earned from some the joking title of "the Unitarian
Pope". He was born in
Hingham, Massachusetts, son of Samuel Norton. Norton graduated from
Harvard University in 1804 and continued as a graduate student and lecturer there and at
Bowdoin College. He was elected a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1815. He was named Dexter Lecturer on Biblical Criticism in 1813, and in 1819, Harvard made him the first Dexter Professor of Sacred Literature, a position he held until 1830; he also served as Harvard College Librarian from 1813 to 1821. , Norton engaged in vigorous debates with
George Ripley in 1836 and
Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1838 (over Emerson's
Divinity School Address). He opposed himself to the rise of
Transcendentalism and insisted on the truth of some of the
Biblical miracles, while rejecting "most of those in the Old Testament, and a few in the new", including rejecting the
virgin birth. In rejecting the
virgin birth he went beyond
William Ellery Channing. He died in 1853 in
Newport, Rhode Island. ==References==