Maggie's Farm

Agnostics, Buddhists, and Jews are fully capable of understanding the cultural influence of the King James Version on American culture. There were nearly no Buddhists, and Agnostics, Jews, etc were not common, but many of them read the text on their own, and all others were exposed to its language and ideas. It was not only the central religious text of a largely religious country, it was the translation used most often, so that its word choice deeply influenced the common phrases used in English. In fact, minority cultures usually understand the majority better than the other way around.

The other great studied texts were the works of Shakespeare, which were also enormously influential, whether one thinks that a good idea or not. People who had little access to formal education- and African-Americans in particular, used these texts to self-educate. Those texts, plus newspapers and Pilgrim's Progress cover a lot of territory of what people had available to read.

I tried to put my point cheerfully that you are entirely wrong and just looking for a fight. Western Europe, the Anglosphere, and American are suffused with Christian ideas, often mangled or misunderstood, but still present. You may dislike that idea and wish the civilisation had developed otherwise, but that doesn't change the basic facts.

One also cannot understand our current civilisation without reference to science and technology, the interaction with previous pagans, and the discovery of the New World. Some things are so foundational and buried so deep that one encounters them at every turn - in the names of places, in the motives people claim, in their reasons for staying and moving.

What things do you think our culture is made of that are separable from Christianity spread over centuries?

We seem to be discussing different things, which perhaps accounts for our radically different views here. It is of course relatively simple to generally understand any culture without reference to its foundational texts, simply by growing up there. In that sense I would call your statement correct, that anyone growing up here or spending a lot of time here could understand Western culture, American culture. Nor would a person have to have more than a passing reference to the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution in written form to understand our culture. We absorb such things in our bones, from references others make, and of what we are able to do and not do,regardless of whether we have thought through them or not.

But the original statement is about "civilisation," which I think is a deeper task. To understand how our civilisation is different from others, an understanding of Christianity is necessary. That is not possible without reading some biblical texts, at least secondhand in the works of others. With specific reference to Anglospheric nations, the AV was the most-used translation for centuries, and its wording is inseparable from the changes in the language since it came out. English is simply a different language without it.

Additionally, since it was one of the few widely-known texts until very recently, say 150 years ago, it was what people actually did know in common, and so it was used in writing, speeches, and conversation.

The KJV isn't that good a translation. Because of how deeply it is buried in our culture, it is the most poetic and emotionally-moving translation. For that reason, I think it is excellent for ceremonial occasions. For instruction, not so much.

As for "hotel," BTW, "inn" is equally wrong. "Guest room of a private house" would be more accurate.