The Evangelicals have "abandoned" the KJV

The evangelical shift away from the KJV reflects a fundamental disagreement about textual authority that crystallized in the 1960s and 1970s. As the KJV-Only movement frames it, manuscript discoveries—particularly those questioning the Textus Receptus underlying the KJV—introduced textual criticism as a destructive force that challenged the authenticity of foundational biblical texts.[1] What evangelicals abandoning the KJV see as scholarly progress, KJV defenders perceive as apostasy.

The core tension centers on how to handle manuscript evidence. Modern textual critics evaluate readings based on external factors like manuscript age and location, plus internal considerations including historical and literary context.[1] KJV defenders reject these methods as subjective human judgment—what nineteenth-century critic John William Burgon called “excursions into cloud-land.”[1] They view modern textual criticism as having transformed the ancient practice of protecting the biblical text into a vehicle for naturalistic and humanistic belief.[1]

The New Testament experienced the fiercest criticism because of its numerous textual variants and its role in Christian doctrine; when modern texts diverge from the KJV and Textus Receptus, the KJV-Only movement charges these alterations as doctrinally significant corruptions.[1] The revision of 1 Timothy 3:16 exemplifies this conflict—where the KJV reads “God was manifest in the flesh,” modern texts substitute “who,” which KJV defenders claim weakens Christ’s divinity despite scholars’ assurances otherwise.[1]

The contemporary movement’s extreme reactions stem partly from increased pluralism and diversity in modern society, with both KJV-Only advocates and their opponents—nearly all fundamentalist Christians—responding differently to tensions between ecumenicism, pluralism, and traditionalism.[2] The abandonment of the KJV thus represents not merely a translation preference but a clash over whether fidelity to Scripture means preserving a particular textual tradition or engaging critically with manuscript evidence.

[1] Jason A. Hentschel, “The King James Only Movement,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America, ed. Paul C. Gutjahr, Oxford Handbooks (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 231–232.
[2] J. Harold Ellens, Heaven, Hell, and the Afterlife: Eternity in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam [3 Volumes] (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2013). [See here.]