Biography
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. In 1819, Harvard made him 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.
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