Berit Kjos

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Berit Kjos is a fundamentalist Christian author who has written several books. She runs the website Kjos Ministries, and has also worked with Cutting Edge Ministries.

Kjos Ministries

One of the main draws to Kjos' site was originally her body of work attacking popular culture, although she eventually curtailed these articles around the mid-2000s. Unusually, Kjos took requests from her readers, and so alongside popular targets such as Harry Potter, Dungeons and Dragons and Pokemon she denounced less frequently-attacked productions, including Dragonball Z and the Spider-Man film.

Anybody expecting a rich vein of fundamentalist lunacy is likely to be disappointed, however. Considering that her associates at Cutting Edge have claimed that J.K. Rowling's books are evil because they include the colour green, Kjos' writing is remarkably tame. This excerpt from her article "Twelve reasons not to see Harry Potter movies" is fairly typical:

Harry and his friends... model how to lie and steal and get away with it. Their examples only add to the cultural relativism embraced by most children today who are honest when it doesn't cost anything, but who lie and cheat when it serves their purpose."

This, meanwhile, comes from the conclusion of her article deconstructing the animated film The Ant Bully:

Around the world, people are being trained in UNESCO ideology. They learn to resist contrary (politically incorrect) facts at every stage in life, for UNESCO's "lifelong learning" means cradle-to-grave mind control. Year after year, compliant human ants will practice the habit of following crowds led by well trained facilitators, managers, and media moguls. A key part of this social transformation is "praxis" -- a concept central to Soviet brainwashing.

In the end, Kjos' articles on popular entertainment are usually pretty much interchangeable, beginning with minor variations of "it's got magic and vampires and stuff in it, so grrr" before descending into lengthy filibusters about left-wing economic policies and the state of contemporary education. The real gems on her site, then, are to be found in the letters section.

Here, for example, is one of the e-mails she received in support of her article condemning Teletubbies:

The British media is - especially the BBC - in the hands of extremist liberal immoral atheistic fascists. Dont believe the lies about independence ; it is tied to the coat tails of the Labour Party, Labour/ Trades Unions and positive discrimination industry. This tide of effluent entered into all structures of the media, local and national government, Civil Service and Education during the 1980's when Margret Thatcher was in power).

Teletubbies is the simple outcome of Bolshevism, and the ideas of Leon Trotsky in particular.

Fundies Say the Darndest Things has racked up an impressive collection of Kjos Ministries quotes, mostly from her readers.

If her supporters' postings are hilarious, however, the messages from Kjos' critics can be just plain depressing. A look through the responses section of her site, particularly the part devoted to anime, will reveal reams of material from strange individuals who manage to be just as sad and deluded as the fundamentalist Christians they're attacking. Just look at this post from "Cubone, the Lonely Pokemon":

Misato wasn't forgiven. She paid the ultimate price, like you probably would have wanted. Justice, right? Well, I hope it makes you happy to know that justice has been done in your eyes. Because someone has to come out of all this happy, and it's not me. Every night I cry thinking of her final moments in this world. Every morning I wake up, and the world's still there, but it's like there's this little part of it that will always be empty, cold, dark, colorless.

So I do hope you are happy that your God has done his justice. Be proud, for your battle is won, and upon your shoulders rest the corpses of the slain for all eternity. Amen.

From reading the above, you would be forgiven for thinking that Misato was this person's wife or daughter. In actual fact, she is a fictional character from the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion.

When you've managed to make Berit Kjos look like one of the less nutty people in the room, then something has clearly gone horribly wrong.

Books

Kjos' bibliography includes Under the Spell of Mother Earth, condemning the occulting undercurrent of the environmentalist movement; Your Child and the New Age, a Turmoil in the Toybox wannabe; and A Twist of Faith, attacking feminist influences on religion.

Best of all is The Invisible War, a novel for children. It stars two boys named Tom and Peter who live in the Kingdom of Troth, and shows how they were lured away from the King (representing God) by the Baron (Satan, obviously) after they and their secular friend Colin find a secret tunnel filled with fantasy novels, books on astrology, role-playing games and a ouija board. After encounters with the Baron's servants Odin and Rama, and a bizarre chapter in which Colin becomes demonically possessed, the children abandon morally and intellectually bankrupt fantasy fiction forever and instead dedicate their lives to the Holy Bible.

External links

• Kjos Ministries