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So, let's get this right...

1. The Church established what Jesus said through the canon.
2. The Church was wrong in oppressing people.
3. The Church being wrong about how it spread it's religion doesn't change what Jesus said.

Do you not see the flawed logic there? There were dozens of "gospels" but only those that toed the Church line were accepted (determined by the Church, mind you). Also, the original text needed to be translated through hundreds of years, but somehow through all this selective editing, the Word of God remained intact?

It takes a lot of faith in humans to accept something like that, and I'm afraid history doesn't lend a whole lot of credibility to the European elite.

Here's the thing: being a Christian implies a strong faith in God. If God can create the world, and can see that the books of the Law was safely transmitted through all of the good and bad times of Hebrew history, then can He not also safeguard the words of His own Son?

It should also be understood that the "church", being the body of all believers in Christ, was not the monolithic legal entity that the Catholic Church later became. It would have been difficult to play conspiracy theory-style "cut and paste" and not have any record of someone being offended trickle out - and Byzantine Christians were especially good at at being offended in a loud way. :)

Moreover, many scholars believe that most of the New Testament can be traced back to the 1st or 2nd centuries, well before there was any well-defined church organizational structure in the modern sense. I'm not an expert though (Physics/Nuclear Engineering nerd), but the Wikipedia article on the New Testament has citations of people who are, for what that's worth.

In light of these things, I don't think it's unreasonable to have trust in the Bible as a reliable transmission of Christ's life and ministry.