Atheists can't hold office in the USA?

It's been pointed out that the US has a legal system, not a justice system. There are procedures in place for changing the laws. There is also a simple fact that not all laws are enforced. If a law has been ruled unconstitutional, does that require that the law be revoked? Or merely that it not be enforced? And what does it take to revoke a law? Does the legislature have to vote on it? If popular opinion supports the unconstitutional law, wouldn't voting to revoke that law be a form of political suicide for an elected legislator? Just look at the repeated waste of valuable legislative time voting for outrageous bills that have absolutely no chance of passing or not getting vetoed, but which are popular with one's constituents.

The law isn't just instrumental, it also has a symbolic, signalling role. It says that this activity is something this society disapproves of to the extent that if you transgress it, the state will punish you.

So to have have it still on the statute books, not simply as a bygone relic of how things used to be, but to be pulled out when it suits regardless of it's ineffectiveness, is a signal of a different kind is it not?

Just this past year, that US Air Force Tech Sergeant whose reenlistment was being denied because, as an atheist, he crossed out "so help me God" in the oath as he may choose to do under Title 10, but which the new (Oct 2013) Air Force Instruction (AFI) did not allow. If a humanist organization had not publicized his situation, the Air Force would not have referred their complaints to Legal, that new AFI would not have been recognized as illegal and unconstitutional, and we would have lost a loyal airman.

Not remotely. Nobody gives a hoot in the UK. It never comes up in day to day conversation.

If an unlawful law is kept on the state books and used occasionally - although ineffectually, the state is signalling to its citizens that although it's been overruled, it still believes its law is legitimate.

But it does seem that in at least one case, the law was attempted to be used.

I agree. But it is the case that the guy from NAACP (who I also had to look up, is indeed a nutter) was able to wave the law about. We're not talking about a right to kill Welshmen with a bow and arrow here.But, I accept that the laws are defunct and are unlikely to be a real problem. Still, I'd like them to be repealed if I lived in one of those states - just to show that they care (but of course they don't).

And what about agnostic?