Following the album's completion, several UMG labels rejected King James Version. In June 2000, Harvey Danger chose to re-sign with their "new/old" label, London-Sire Records. On July 6, 2000, Harvey Danger announced on their website that King James Version had been fully sequenced, mastered and approved by London-Sire, and unveiled the new album's title and release date. Prior to the album's release, Harvey Danger expanded into a sextet with the introduction of guitarist Mike Squires and keyboard player John Roderick, in an effort to improve the quality of the band's live performances.
King James Version was released in the United States and Canada on September 12, 2000. Alongside the album, a self-titled EP containing three B-sides from the King James Version sessions was sold with purchases of the album exclusively at Circuit City stores, limited to 3,000 copies. The EP's songs were later included in the band's 2009 compilation album Dead Sea Scrolls. Nelson attempted to get King James Version (including its B-sides) released on vinyl through Barsuk Records, of which he was a partner, but those plans fell through due to legal issues surrounding licensing. The album's release was met with little fanfare, and failed to make an impact on the Billboard 200 chart. Speaking with The Morning Call three weeks after the album's release, Nelson stated that he had anticipated, and received, "a lot of indifference" towards King James Version's release, and felt that most of Harvey Danger's audience was made up of "the sort of people who buy whatever is on the radio, or they buy a record for a hit and they don’t listen to, or care about, what’s on the rest of the record". By December 2004, the album had sold 25,000 copies in the United States, well below the sales of the band's debut album.
London-Sire promoted King James Version with the release of one single, "Sad Sweetheart of the Rodeo", which was serviced to radio stations on August 7, 2000. The single became a minor hit for the band, reaching number 27 on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart and remaining on the chart for nine weeks. The band filmed a music video for the song, directed by Evan Bernard, in Los Angeles, California on August 15 and 16, 2000. The music video was added to rotation on MTV2; it was due to premiere on MTV's 120 Minutes on September 24, 2000, but an MTV intern played the music video for "Flagpole Sitta" by accident instead. MTV responded to the band's complaints by claiming that the video for "Sad Sweetheart of the Rodeo" had received poor test screenings, and it was pulled from rotation. The band also appeared on The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn on October 18, 2000. The album's second single, "Authenticity", was released on August 28, 2001, through Gold Circle Records. At that point, the band had been proposing that the song be released as a single for nearly a year because it had been included in the soundtracks of Dude, Where's My Car? (2000) and Soul Survivors (2001), as well as the trailer of Soul Survivors. However, the single did not receive a music video or widespread promotion, as Harvey Danger had broken up by the time it was released.
Harvey Danger initially embarked on a national tour across the United States and Canada throughout the first half of September 2000 in support of King James Version. The band performed in Montreal and played an acoustic set at Tower Records in Seattle on September 12. From October 7 to October 27, 2000, Harvey Danger toured as an opening act for the pop-punk band SR-71 alongside the power pop band Wheatus. The remainder of the band's shows in 2000 took place in the band's hometown of Seattle during late December, where the band performed three songs for the Screaming Santa's X-Mas Show at the I-Spy on December 23, and a New Year's Eve show at Consolidated Works. From March 22 to 24, 2001, Harvey Danger performed as an opener for Alien Crime Syndicate. The band played their final show of that year on April 21, 2001, alongside Hazel and Quasi.
