Christopher Hitchens

You can't make a good case that the U.S. a Christian nation from the perspective of the structure of the nation or from the tenets of Christianity. From a Christian point of view, there is not really any such thing as a "Christian nation" (although you could argue that there is such thing as a Christianized nation).

You don't know yourself what the story of jesus really is. You posit that a text written several decades after the events is completely accurate when police reports are full of witness accounts that can't agree on anything except the most basic elements about events that took place only hours before the accounts! Imagine how much of these accounts would be left after thirty to forty years! The mind boggles.

If you appreciate CH as an exemplary heretic of his time,
you'd really love the Greatest of the heretics of His time.
Wasn't Jesus Christ crucified for something like heresy?

Thus, I seldom have a problem with heretics. 
They are at least still playing an honest game.
The problem I usually have is with hypocrites,
because they are not. If anyone is hellbound,
it is not the heretic. Rather, it is the hypocrite,
who never committed to any side of anything.

God Bless Christopher Hitchens.

I don't believe that you truly know what heresy means. It's quite specific and definitely does not apply to CH.

Heretics are believers, who stray from the dominant religious dogma in a way that is considered to be beyond what is acceptable. For one thing, CH was an Atheist.

Was Christ kicking back against a
universal orthodoxy in his day, or does
the Bible just try to make it seem that way?

I think the Bible is telling a story.

He was certainly kicking back against some of the orthodoxies of his day. The claim to be Messiah wasn't that big a deal (there were more than a couple of other claimants), but the claim to some sort of divinity was a deal breaker. Some examples:

1. Jesus implied that what was going on in the Temple in particular (and Jerusalem in general) was corrupt enough to warrant its destruction (although the Essenes agreed with him on this, but Jesus actually did something about it).
2. He associated himself with the divine messianic figure in Daniel (at the moment of truth, in front of the Sanhedrin).
3. He had the audacity to break rules and expectations of "cleanness" (associating with gentiles, traitors, the wrong kind of women, lepers, etc.). "Cleanness" was what impacted acceptability before God; this was long before our individualized culture—what you did didn't just impact you, it impacted your family, your village, your nation, etc.
4. He claimed the ultimate authority of interpretation of Torah and centred it around himself (interpretation battles were common, but that last bit...).

So in a lot ways, what we perceive today when we read the text isn't as "unorthodox" as we might think, but in other ways, some of his actions were far more controversial, shocking, and revolutionary.

Funny, in the context of this conversation, I just came across these videos that do a pretty good job of explaining the Bible as literature, and how the narrative works.

bibleproject.com/explore/category/how-to-read-bible-introduction/

Not really. It's not about rules. It's mostly narrative designed to communicate an offer and elicit a response. Most of the rules in fact are the terms of the suzerainty-type covenant God established with Israel.