The King James Bible and Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom

For the last two decades, my church home has been mostly Episcopalian. Episcopalians aren’t really supposed to read the King James Version anymore. It’s almost embarrassing to tell someone that you do. It can feel like admitting that your favorite television show is still Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.
But I grew up with King James language—I breathed it like air. I memorized long passages that remain with me. As a kid, I rarely said anything worth repeating, but when I did, my mother would remark to my father, “Out of the mouth of babes!” (Psalm 8:2). Today, I can no more unhinge some of these phrases and verses from my psyche than I can go back in time and undo the mistakes that I made in high school.
I still love the cadence and language of the KJV, though I cannot agree that the newer translations are deficient or unfaithful to the original text. In fact, I know the exact opposite is usually true. The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) seems to be the preferred translation of today’s academics because of its contemporary scholarship, use of the most recent manuscripts—including those discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls—removal of archaisms, attention to the differences between genres (typesetting poetry as poetry, presenting the Song of Songs as drama, and so on), and the use of appropriate gender-inclusive language. But of course there are many others. For example, I know that the New International Version (NIV) and Today’s New International Version (TNIV) are preferred by many pastors, and quite a few poets and writers are partial to the Revised English Bible (REB).
But the KJV is the only one that is a building block of our collective cultural heritage. It is like the characters in Dickens or the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. (both fans). Where would we be without phrases like these: “the fat of the land” (Genesis 45:18), “eat, drink, be merry” (Luke 12:19), “the apple of his eye” (Deuteronomy 32:10), and bunches more?