Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity

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The Norris-Hulse Professorship of Divinity is one of the senior professorships in divinity at the University of Cambridge.

The Norrisian chair was founded in 1777 by a bequest from John Norris. Among the original stipulations of the bequest were that the holder should be between 30 and 60 years old, and that he should be fined 21 shillings from his salary if any student at his lectures were not provided with copies of the Old and New Testaments, and a Pearson on the Creed.

John Hulse (1708–1790) was an English clergyman from Middlewich, Cheshire. On his death, he bequeathed a large percentage of his estate to found a prize essay, two scholarships, and the positions of 'Hulsean Lecturer' and 'Christian Advocate'. The Hulsean Lecturer was originally required to deliver twenty sermons each year on the evidence of Christianity or scriptural difficulties, and the position continues to this day, although the number of lectures has been reduced greatly. In 1860 the Christian Advocate became the 'Hulsean Professor of Divinity'.

In 1934 the Norrisian and Hulsean Professorships were merged to form the Norris-Hulse Professorship. The expertise of the incumbent is generally expected to include philosophical theology, although the post does not formally require this.

In 2005 the Norris-Hulse professorship was frozen by the University of Cambridge. The reasons for this were obscure; its effect was to save the University of Cambridge money and to deprive the Divinity Faculty of leadership in the area of philosophical theology. However, on 18 October 2006, the university announced the election of Sarah Coakley (the present Edward Mallinckrodt, Jr. Professor of Divinity at Harvard University) to the position.