Murder mystery: what killed Christianity in Europe?

[FatAndFaithless]

Centuries of top-down imposed government sponsored religion and the resulting 'divine' conflicts against other equally devout populations probably engendered a sense of mistrust towards religion, and eventually people realized they simply didn't need it.

Religion flourishes in America precisely because there is no 'official' religion, so the marketplace of ideas is up for grabs (for better or worse).  The results are that you get the craziest ideas like creationism and scientology being spread around, but also the extreme critiques and dissections of those ideas without any interference from the government, something that wasn't possibe in ye olde Europe.

My problem with the "free market" hypothesis is that non-state funded churches have no more obstacles to overcome in springing up or growing than any church does in the US, (apart from the disinterest of the population, of course)

That's just the definition of the marketplace of ideas. Nothing's stopping you from starting a church, but you won't get any government help, and if people aren't interested, tough shit.

In fact unlike in the USA , they can even open state schools with a "religious ethos" of any recognised religion they choose, accepting only children from that religion, etc. A very significant minority of state schools are Catholic, and there are a few Hindu, Muslim and Sikh state schools. It also doesn't explain why the Church of England, the state-funded and official religion, is among the denominations that has long been suffering the worst decline here. Catholic and evangelical church attendance rates have seen increases in recent years (a weaker trend than the decline of overall church attendance), in part because of immigration. 

Are you saying this is how it is in Europe, unlike the USA? Then that kind of just further goes along with my point..top-down government sponsored religion is something that grinds people the wrong way, thanks to European history.