History:   Unitarians have a tradition of questioning authority and have often been persecuted for their liberal beliefs.   In 325 the Council of Nicea declared Unitarianism to be a heresy; a designation reaffirmed in 544 by the emperor Justinian in Constantinople.   Nevertheless, over the centuries many Christians have continued to express doubt that God is literally and simultaneously both one and three persons.   During the Middle Ages In Europe, Unitarians, like scientists, homosexuals, outspoken women, and other groups outside the margins of orthodoxy, were burned at the stake.   Unitarians fared poorly during the Protestant Reformation, as well.   Michael Servetus, a scientist and inventor, was burned at the stake in 1553 on the orders of John Calvin for promoting a non-trinitarian Christianity.   In the 1600’s and 1700’s many Unitarians fled to America, seeking religious freedom.   In America in the early 19th century there was considerable theological debate in the “churches of the standing order” in New England.   The traditionalists became Congregationalists and the liberals became Unitarians. The Nazis under Hitler sought to exterminate Unitarians; a fact that takes on some irony in the 21st Century as leaders such as Pat Roberston lump “feminists, homosexuals, and Unitarians” together as “Nazis”.   As recently as 2008, a gunman entered a Unitarian Universalist Church in Tennessee during a children’s pageant and shot several children and other parishioners dead for being “liberal.”