In my church, it’s KJ, all the time. I hate it. It is not my native tongue. And here is what is comical: On two separate occasions, during his sermon, our pastor interpreted what the king james said into “modern english” so that the congregation could understand what it really meant. In BOTH cases, he said, word for word, what was in the same place in my wife’s NIV bible.
I have many versions of the bible and study sites such as Blueletterbible and biblehub on the internet going to the original manuscripts and word/phrase definitions. I have no use for a King James bible other than to show people where it is confusing and sometimes just plain wrong. (look up “mansion”)
There are two basic philosophies of translation, with a spectrum running between them.
I grew up with a very literal translation almost exclusively, it tried to translate word for word as closely as possible. Nothing wrong with that and it’s in many ways very useful.
The other is a free translation, by which the translator tries to get across the idea he believes the writer had in mind, but using words that a modern English-speaker would use.
I go back and forth between them, because I think they complement each other very well.
I also like the Amplified Bible, which brings in all the shades of meaning of words for which the other two methods have to pick one.
There are many of us who prefer the King James Version. It is a far more beautiful translation.
It’s a sign of revering the artifact more than reading it for its message. There is much to praise KJV for, historically speaking: it was a revolutionary version for its time and it brought the bible into the most modern English of its day. If there was a worst weakness, it was that an eye for poetic diction often upstaged faithfulness to the source manuscripts. But the English language has evolved, as has manuscript scholarship.
ANY well-rendered bible will give you an acceptably accurate view of prophecy and doctrine. It was formulated to be robust across barriers of language and culture.
/rant