Dieu n'est pas mort 2

For those wondering if it's worse than the first one.... wonder no more, it certainly is.

This film is set in an alternate reality, in which the United States is run by smug, douche bag atheists. In this world, Christians are persecuted against in all aspects or life, Christians are all classy, attractive, happy, and non judgmental individuals.

Melissa Joan Hart is a teacher, she dares to mentioned Jesus in class, the establishment is outraged, she must be taken down. What follows is a ridiculous court farce, in this court, no one knows what the constitution is, and all those smug atheists have a serious bee in their bonnet.

I won't spoil the ending.... but needless to say, it is something more akin to a fantasy novel.

The life of the Creator/Deity of the infinite universe of time, space, and matter gets a second go round in God's Not Dead 2. In this film, Advanced Placement History teacher Melissa Joan Hart is suspended when she quotes from the Gospel of Matthew in answer to a student's question concerning Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King. Somebody tapes the lesson and Hart's hauled up before the school board and then put on trial. For what I'm still not sure as this is not a criminal matter. Now what John Thomas Scopes was put on trial for teaching evolution back in the 20s, that was a criminal matter. All that should be happening here is a legal appeal of an administrative ruling and certainly that is civil.

I remember many years ago in New York City in the Bronx I believe there was a teacher fired for bringing up Jesus as her evangelical faith tells her she has to. She was told that she could not be talking about religion. With all seriousness and ingenuousness she replied she wasn't talking about religion to her students, she was talking about Jesus. That got her deservedly canned. Poor woman had not a clue.

The school board retains the biggest villain in the evangelical modern world, the American Civil Liberties Union. Ray Wise is a properly smarmy lawyer whom if he wore a handlebar mustache would be twirling it. Hart's lawyer is Jesse Metcalfe late of the revived TV Dallas and he's the hero of the piece saving Hart's job and right to her beliefs.

I brought up the Scopes Trial and those of us who've seen any version of Inherit The Wind remember that the judge ruled out scientific expert testimony about evolution. That's not what happens here as Jesse Metcalfe is allowed to bring in religious 'expert' testimony from some real folk playing themselves. I guess different rules apply in Judge Ernie Hudson's court. Mike Huckabee is playing himself as Fox New commentator and he's probably cursing the fact that God's Not Dead 2 was released after he called a halt to his presidential campaign.

The original God's Not Dead was a Christian propaganda piece, but in terms of the film the story was interestingly presented. This one played like a long episode story from the 700 Club. I'm sure it will play heavily on the Christian film circuit and will be rented a lot by youth pastors all over the Bible Belt once it goes to DVD.

It's a truly simplistic world these folks live in. They're right, the Bible is the word of God not to be questioned or given alternative interpretation. And those who don't believe are either sinners beyond redemption or a fertile evangelical field to be plowed.

Seeing the united front the kids give Melissa Joan Hart in support you know this is a Bible Belt community she's from. I wonder if there are any kids openly saying that she was wrong. God help them, the gay kids must be very deep in the closet there.

Firstly, I'm an atheist. I was raised a devout Episcopalian but I often refer to myself as a secular humanist & non-believer but raised with culturally Christian views. Having said that, I noticed right away at the scene in the history class that nothing Melissa Hart said actually violated any hard & fast 1stAMD separation issues. She was within her rights to share those historical facts. She responded to a question in a history class about historically specific correlations between traditions in non-violent protest and passive resistance. Maybe she could have omitted the lengthy scripture quote from the Gospel---but a sound argument could be made that even that was academically relevant too. So...IMHO it was quite relevant and legal. Remember...I'm not a "believer". No school board would take this complaint seriously. I actually think that the ACLU might have defended Melissa Hart!!! It's obvious that the movie makers are trying to unfairly demonize the "freedom from religion" crowd (a rapidly growing demographic BTW) as fanatically unreasonable and angry. In fact, I've found that the exact opposite is usually true. Just research the landmark Kitzmiller vs Dover School board case. As to the ongoing portrayal of atheists and liberal religious types throughout the film, it's an inartfully constructed "straw man" set up for the express purpose of getting easily knocked down. Poor Christians! They have a Biblical persecution complex and are happiest when they can imagine being burned at the stake by the ACLU and a shouting, un-Churched mob of pagan non-believers! Wait 'til you see how they depict the ACLU lawyers as basely motivated by notoriety, power politics and publicity. Not very good...and not persuasive. I think most people can see through this bit of evangelical agitprop whether religious or non-religious.

What drove me into this film? Well, that is hard to describe since in English there apparently doesn't exist an equivalent word for the German term "Schadenfreude". But allow me to elaborate: I am a sucker for bad movies. I love the Ed Wood and Al Adamson flicks, Italian cannibal flicks, German schnitzel-westerns, Ninja flicks from Hong Kong, Greek porn-comedies, etc. I openly admit and repent not. Yes, I do own a copy "Saving Christmas" and watch every Kirk Cameron flick (again: "Schadenfreude"). I only realized that there was a sequel to the original train-wreck when somebody pointed out that "Batman vs. Superman" is only doing so well at the box-office because there was no competition apart from a handful of bible-thumping-flicks. So I took a pilgrimage of-sort (the only cinema that showed it was about an hour's drive away) and to put it into the words of the target-audience, let me now testify to what I hath witnessed and speaketh unto thee: Long story short (remember: this story prattles on for more than two hours, though it actually feels a lot longer): Melissa Joan Hart (best – and ironically – remembered for her lead in the TV-show "Sabrina, the teenage witch"; Catchphrase "Woohoo!") plays a high school teacher, who is suddenly overcome with that ol' itch and begins to sermonize to her students about her believe – in history-class, no less. The logic consequence ensues and she's given the boot, just as a math-teacher would get canned, if he began to preach that one and one is the Holy Trinity. But, unwilling to understand that a school isn't a church, she goes to court and fights for her "god-given" right to preach to children in a class-room.

Now, imagine that scenario: your child comes home from school and, when asked what he/she had learned that day, he/she replies that the god Ganesha has an elephant head (History-class), the basics of L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics (English-Literature-Class), the basics of Alchemy (Science) and Phrenology-101 (Biology). And that the P.E.-teacher was handing out communion wafers and splashed the students with holy water. I presume that most people would be like "WTF!?" and sue the school for all it's worth. So would any fire-and-brimstone-cussing evangelist. But we're not talking any old heathen religion (Catholicism, Judaism, Hinduism, you name it), we're talking about the "real deal" – which may sound cynical to some readers, but that is exactly the stance this "movie" and its ilk takes.

Sure, we could argue that religion should be taught in school. Plenty of time for the kids to learn about all those countless deities, gods and demi-gods, from Zeus to Odin to Jehovah, and to heck with history, geometry and basic science. I can guarantee you one thing: By the end of the semester, those kids won't even be able to read and write properly, but will be convinced that people once-upon-a-time rode on dinosaurs and slew dragons.

Back to the film: of course "God is not Dead 2" tries to establish itself as some Anti-"Inherit the Wind". All the Christians are portrayed as saints and martyrs, thrown into the lion-pits of a cruel, unjust (and ungodly) world, which wants nothing more than to take away their crutch for reality. "We are the victims and everybody else is the enemy", is the prevailing message, and it makes it very clear, why many Christian fundamentals are considered the American answer to the Taliban. If this sentiment would have been around in the 1940's, surely a Nazi war-criminal would have jumped up at the Nuremberg trials, demanding that the judge "stop oppressing me!" And if you ask me about acting, editing, production-values and everything else that goes with a real movie: well, it's a two-hour-plus sermon, featuring either zealots or washed-up has-beens, happy to see the front of a camera. And sure, there'll be plenty of claqueurs, who'll clap and cheer this flick, calling it the greatest thing since Noah's flood, etc. But don't let yourself be fooled. It's trash, no matter how you look at it. Again, if you have seen "Inherit the Wind", you might remember how that film ended; hence, here goes the mandatory one point out of ten.

first i want to mention i'm an orthodox and that i could not bear to see the movie more than 30 minutes.

the good guys in this move have a very puritanical presence. they seem so very calm and also seem a bit retarded. dialogues are very limited, predictable. they want to sound deep but end up laughable.

i believe this movie does a great disservice to Christians. the dialogues sound like members of a sect are talking. it makes faith look very shallow and almost weird. it makes the believers look very dumb and narrow minded.

lee me distill it a bit further. if i would not be a Christian i would think that Christians are a dubious sect, a little slow in the head and would look at it with doubt.