Readers Write (Aug. 26): Religion and politics, teaching English, Minneapolis budget decisions

Corby Pelto's Aug. 24 commentary on the toxicity of religion in politics has it very wrong. The U.S. Constitution does not require a total separation of church and state. According to my reading it says only two things:

• "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

• "No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

The notion of separation of church and state is an extra-Constitutional conception that has been used to apply these two prohibitions and has been seized upon by antireligious activists in an effort to drive all references to religion from government activity and political discourse.

Thus Pelto's right to freedom from religion seems to trump Michele Bachmann's, Rick Perry's and everyone else's freedom of religion as well as their freedom of speech and freedom of the press (Pelto's objection to religious remarks in the media).

Pelto should direct his attack toward intolerance of other people's religion rather than engage in a broad-brush attack on organized religion in general. Then his historical misdeeds could include the antireligious repressions of China, the former Soviet Union and many other secular dictatorships.

The irreligious are often capable of their own religious intolerance. I am not at present a churchgoer, but I do not mind hearing that Bachmann and Perry or Barack Obama and Sen. Harry Reid are -- it helps me to understand their frame of reference, values and perhaps motivation.

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I don't expect the president to know everything about evolution. Such specific knowledge is tangential to the required skill set. But choosing competent advisers is most definitely a trait that I look for in a presidential candidate.

It is perhaps the most important skill.

That's why I'm dismayed by the number of presidential candidates who are so ready to ignore the collective scientific knowledge gleaned by millions of scientists over the last hundred years, in favor of a handful of creationists who have no scientific explanation for the diversity of life on Earth, but who somehow know that their God wouldn't use mutation and selection.

MATTHEW VONK, BELDENVILLE, WIS.

The Aug. 25 Letter of the Day urges citizens to volunteer to teach adult English Language Learner classes in the Minneapolis schools. It's a laudable suggestion, but I have mixed emotions about it.

I can't help remembering the elementary school teacher I met in the 1990s who actively discouraged volunteering in the schools. She believed it led people to think, "Why do we need to pay people when we can get folks to do the work for free?"

Minnesotans are crying out for paying jobs to put food on the table. Companies have little incentive to hire when desperate interns and volunteers do work gratis, perhaps in the vain hope that it will turn into something permanent.

It's hard to read the letter writer's suggestion that the students get paid for attending classes while the teachers get nothing.

How can we instill any genuine deference and dignity to the vocation of teaching when it's promoted as something "fun" you can do "a few hours per week" after you "get a little training"?

Then maybe we could advocate for these fully trained individuals to be paid a fair wage for their time and talent.

ROBIN JOHNSON, ALEXANDRIA, MINN.

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That the mayor and City Council in Minneapolis can lay off firefighters and teachers and still have the gall to hire a "bicycle coordinator" is an appalling example of the disconnect between the current leadership and the needs of the community ("Despite fiscal woes, city aims to hire bike coordinator," Aug. 25). The taxpaying community, that is.

NORM SPILLETH, MINNEAPOLIS

The article misleads readers into thinking that the firefighters are being fired so that a bicycle/pedestrian coordinator can be hired. This type of journalistic laziness is expected from basement bloggers and not from a reputable publication.

The timing of the firefighter layoffs and of the coordinator job announcement is purely coincidental. There are two separate stories here:

• Why is the city laying off firefighters?

• Why is the city hiring a bicycle/pedestrian coordinator?

Now, try again, reporting on them separately.

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My daughter, Audrey Hull, was recently killed by a truck while riding her bicycle at the corner of 15th Av. and 4th St. in Minneapolis.

If the city had hired a bicycle and pedestrian coordinator years ago -- a position that exists in many comparable cities -- the changes now proposed for that demonstrably dangerous corner might have been in place on April 21, 2011, and Audrey might still be alive.

I urge Minneapolis to proceed with its plans to hire the bicyclist and pedestrian coordinator so that fewer families will have to bear the emptiness that I now carry in my heart.