'Don't Bother Asking God For Diced Fruit Cocktail!'-Christian Prayer! | Vaughn, Charles Lee

The surprising degree of homogeneity that Americäs heterogeneous religious landscape could produce is indicated by the predominance of the Authorized, or King James, Version in the seas of American Bibles. Fully 90% of the 1,784 separate editions of Scripture published in America from 1776 to 1865 were of the King James Version. Only 6% were Catholic translations, most Douay Rheims; the rest represented unsuccessful efforts by Protestants to improve upon the King James. The prevalence of this one translation was even greater than these figures suggest, since the larger print runs and the most often reprinted editions were almost always of the Authorized Version. By the early years of the United States, in other words, Scripture had become the national book par excellence. Confidence in the ability of ordinary people to understand it fueled the formation of many new sects. The revitalization and expansion of Protestantism in the early republic rested upon a widely shared confidence in the trustworthiness of the Bible. Broad familiarity with its contents characterized both ordinary people and elites. (Mark A. Noll, Americäs God).