> Says whom?
I suspect just about every avid connoisseur of American media who isn’t out to peddle a narrative, but I didn’t do a survey at our last quarterly meeting so I can’t tell for sure. :)
> Not-strongly-denominational non-to-weakly (note the “a”; not a typo for “weekly”) practicing Christian, or similarly weakly-attached Jewish, seems to be the norm, outside of showed focussing on a distinct and different subculture.
Of the characters who are identifiably religious I could agree that Christians and Jews are a majority, but I strongly suspect that they outnumber irreligious characters.
Consider that the mainstay of virtually all pop culture are drugs, alcohol, and premarital sex, most or all of which are embraced by the “normal” characters but taboo among American Christians. When a character is identifiably Christian, they are almost always portrayed as judgmental of those things, which is to say they contrast from the “normal” characters. The default has to be some identity which jives with the popular culture, and since Christian ethos are incompatible with the bread and butter of pop culture, I am certain that the default is not Christian.
> I don't think that's really all that much more true than other identities
It seems to be different for the irreligious identities. Pop culture doesn’t rarely leans on cliches to identify a character that doesn’t believe, because it doesn’t need to, they are the default. But yes, I agree that for other identities, writers need to do something to indicate the identity and per Sturgeon’s Law (TIL, thanks) most of that is lazy stereotyping.