"That's the problem with atheism - it doesn't take away the pain, it only takes away the hope". There are a lot of really good quotes like this in this movie, but, this second instalment of the GOD'S NOT DEAD themed movies falls short of the original (which I really liked) and falls back into the trap of too many Christian movies. Full disclosure - I am a Christian (a full time follower of Jesus) and a media follower and fan(atic) but I am often embarrassed by Christian movies. Like this one, they present life in stark black and white (ie. really good people vs. really evil people; saints and villains; simple decisions vs. evil choices) when life is much more complex than this because people are much more complex than these movies present them to be and life presents situations that don't always have obvious moral delineation. Life (and people) are messy. So, I challenge Christian movie makers, decide who your audience is, and if you decide it is a starving world that needs to know the radical power of Jesus to be their hope, then write about a world they will recognize and then show them Jesus. The best thing about this movie was the testimony to the overwhelming evidence that lead skeptics to affirm a historical Jesus (some of those skeptics then accepted Jesus as their Saviour and Lord, some did not). I give this movie a 6.5 (a hesitant good) out of 10. [Drama]

It is not often that the sequel is better than the original, but this is the case with this movie. The main plot involves a teacher who gets sued by the ACLU for mentioning Jesus at a public school history class in response to a question by one of her students. The school district cooperates with the ACLU's lawsuit in order to find a reason to fire her. At stake is the real issue of whether a public school teacher may even mention the historical facts about Jesus even in the context of history without being accused of proselytizing. The sequel is better than the original because the stakes are higher. And I do not think that the "enemies" are grotesquely exaggerated as in the first movie: because there really are powerful forces out there (the ACLU being one of them) whose view of the Constitution demands that Christians in particular hide their faith from public, lest someone out there be offended.

Along the way some minor characters who appeared in the first movie make some cameos: the pastor, the blogger journalist, and the son of the communist official. The were minor characters in the first movie, and they remain minor characters in this one as well.