"An obscure sect probably extant during the middle of the fourth century, and so called because they imitated Adamic simplicity in going without clothing while at worship."
Funk and Wagnalls Encyclopedia, ©1950
The Adamites believed that Jesus's grace allowed them to draw closer to God in their nakedness, unlike Adam and Eve who were ashamed and withdrew from God in the garden because of their nakedness. They also cited the verse in which Job reminded his listeners that we all entered and exited life naked, and used that to argue that we will all face God naked. While King David apparently lost his robe in a religious dancing frenzy and danced naked for the Lord. Those Christians who worship naked, and the Bible verses they focus upon, are not to be confused with Russian Skoptzie Christians who focused on different verses, namely, Jesus's words, "Some have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven.” (Mat. 19:12) The Skoptzie ensured that they might obtain the kingdom and avoid the "lust of the eyes" and "of the flesh," via the use of a knife. All for the kingdom. (Another example of a Christian who made himself a eunuch for the kingdom of heaven was the early church father, Origin.)
Adamites, Edward T. Babinski, ©2006
"A sect of fanatics founded by a certain Picard, which became numerous in Bohemia and Moravia in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Picard styled himself Adam, the son of God, rejected the sacrament of the supper and the priesthood and advocated the community of women. His followers were detested as much by the followers of Huss as by the Catholics."
Funk and Wagnalls Encyclopedia, ©1950
"Many Hussites combined their zeal for the purity of the church and the simplicity of the clergy with eschatological visions of the imminent return of Christ. The more radical Hussites took Mark 13:14 literally and fled to two mountains, renamed Horeb (in northern Bohemia) and Tábor (between Prague and Ceské Budejovice). From them, the two radical groups derived their names, the Horebites and the more prominent Taborites. The Taborite leader, John Žižka, effectively organized the Hussites to resist the crusading armies. Žižka destroyed a still more radical group of "Adamites" --perhaps Beghards--in a battle at Tabor in 1421. The moderate, episcopally organized Hussites, or Ultraquists, aided by many of the nobility, defeated the radical Taborites in 1434. Their principle demands were granted by the Council of Basel. Bohemia was able to keep a kind of national "reformed" church. It remained under Rome, relatively independent but not strikingly different in doctrine, until the Counter-Reformation."
HERESIES, p. 301, Wyclif, Hus and the Hussites, "The Protestant Reformation" ©1984, 1988, Hendrickson Publishers
