We here at The Heartland Institute come from many religious backgrounds. And, speaking for myself, this layman is generally reluctant to criticize the spiritual mission of any church. But when a coalition of mainline churches decide to use the power of their pulpits to promote bad public policy that will waste public funds and stretch the concept of “rights” to absurd levels, it’s hard to resist weighing in. The urge to respond is only heightened by a campaign that is as annoying as it is ignorant.

The United Church of Christ is spearheading the “Bring Betty Broadband” campaign, which includes the support of the National Council of Churches, the US Catholic Conference of Bishops, the United Methodists, the Presbyterian Church (PCUSA), the Lutherans (ELCA), and the Islamic Society of North America. The effort is part of the group’s media reform project called “So We Might See,” which advocates for “media justice.”

What is “media justice”? I’m still not sure, but it is clear what the coalition thinks is a media injustice: The fact that some people in America lack sufficient broadband connections to download videos of, say, will.i.am singing the praises of Obama, or this parody of Obama’s cult of personality using the Cake song “We Are Building a Religion.”

According to the coalition, lack of government-funded broadband in every hamlet from sea to shining sea is a violation of the “right to disseminate and receive information.” The “Bring Betty Broadband” campaign casts the broadband debate in moral terms. It’s about securing a “right that helps to define ourselves as human beings and political actors.”

And you thought church was where you went to act on the state of your soul. Nope. It’s a moral imperative to make sure the $7.2 billion set aside in the stimulus package for broadband is concentrated on plugging-in the poor because, you see, “in the modern economy, just distribution of access to communication and information is essential to promote economic justice.” Says the coalition: “Increasingly in the United States, the fundamental right to communicate is meaningless without high speed Internet access.”

Meaningless? Really? Let’s stop here for a second and talk about what are the fundamental rights of Americans. Yes, the right to free speech is fundamental, but it is not the responsibility of government to provide the means of that communication. By the logic of this coalition of political-activist churches, the government should have provided to every American printing presses in the late 18th century, “speaking trumpets” and soap boxes in the 19th century, and radio stations in the 20th century.

After all, how can “the fundamental right to communicate” mean anything when FDR had his nationally broadcast fireside chats, while those who might have opposed his farm policies had only the power to chat with a neighbor over lemonade on the porch? In fact, once you get the government into the business of providing the means to speak, you open the door to the government controlling that speech — a dangerous road.

Yet this is the argument the coalition makes, and they use the power of the Internet to keep hammering it home. In a plodding “Bring Betty Broadband” video, a voice-over intones with a scolding baritone:

“Betty deserves better, and so do millions in this country who are still without high-speed Internet access. Broadband communications is a fundamental right. Our democracy, our economy and our Betty depend on it.”

Poor Betty. She only has dial-up, and so the pictures and videos she wants to see take too long. And she simply can’t wait for the market to bring her broadband, so it’s incumbent upon the taxpayers to provide it. Never mind that dial-up, while slow, still allows you to communicate by email and read news on blogs on the Web. Never mind that today there is 63 percent broadband penetration in the United States, up 34 percent since 2007. Never mind that people in urban areas (even the poor) have several broadband providers to choose from. Never mind that only the most remote locations in the United States have no choices at all for broadband (a Heartland staffer lives in a rural Wisconsin town of fewer than 2,000 people and has speedy cable Internet service). And never mind that even if one lived full time in an RV, he or she could point a DirecTV satellite to the south and get broadband speeds about as fast as what the federal government — in its typical bureaucratic sloth and ignorance — considers to be “high-speed.”

In fact, it’s quite clear that these champions of “economic justice” care not a whit about these facts. They are aiming to leverage the broadband stimulus money as a way to put the government in charge of the way we consume the Internet and push the vibrant market aside — to the point that it will slow down investment in innovative content that continually amazes the world.

How else can one interpret the coalition’s urgings for the federal government to “promote digital inclusion initiatives to stimulate broadband demand”? (Dirty little secret: A good percentage of Americans who don’t have broadband connections simply don’t want them.) The “So We Might See” campaign insists the government “ensure that all U.S. residents have access to the digital skills and equipment necessary” to get online. How? Through “the establishment of local and national digital inclusion councils” who work with other community organizers “to promote digital inclusion principles.” That’s code for giving the government the power to tell Internet Service Providers how they may operate their businesses and where they must invest.

The group also urges the government spend money on “media literacy curriculum for secondary schools.” Question: Didn’t we already spend billions wiring all public schools to the Internet during the Clinton administration? If not, perhaps the Clintons should stop taking credit.

This coalition’s anti-market, anti-capitalism instincts, however, are revealed most plainly in the way it brags about its “Spare Kids the Ads” campaign while pushing for this latest victory for “economic  justice.” The group is against allowing advertising to be “embedded” on Web pages — the economic model that has brought more “free” Internet access to the masses than any bloated government program. And, as a bonus, it hasn’t cost the taxpayers a dime.

No matter. All advertising is apparently the devil’s work. They are offended American Idol “featured products 4,636 times during a six-month period in early 2008. While Simon, Paula and Randy may not necessarily prefer to drink Diet Coke, millions of viewers are led to believe they do — at Coca-Cola’s paid insistence.”

Yet “Betty” deserves free broadband at their insistence — and we pay. Call it coerced charity. Call it abuse of the pulpit. And also call it a scam that would trade market forces and freedom of expression on the Internet for a government that has more control over the Web and demands ever-more pieces of silver.