God's Not Dead 2 (also known as God's Not Dead 2: He's Surely Alive)[5] is a 2016 American Christian drama film, directed by Harold Cronk, and starring Melissa Joan Hart, Jesse Metcalfe, David A. R. White, Hayley Orrantia and Sadie Robertson. It is a sequel to God's Not Dead (2014), and the second installment in the titular film series. Aside from David A.R. White reprising his role as Reverend David Hill, Paul Kwo, Benjamin Onyango, and Tricha LaFache also reprise their roles as Martin Yip, Reverend Jude, and Amy Ryan respectively. It follows a high school teacher facing a court case that could end her career, after having answered a student's seemingly innocuous question about Jesus. The film presents an evangelical perspective on the separation of church and state. Like its predecessor, the film received widely negative reviews from critics, who considered it a wildly unrealistic example of alleged anti-Christian legal cases to the point of playing into the Christian persecution complex; the film's understanding of how church and state are balanced in education was criticized as "wholly divorced from any rational understanding of the topic".[1] The film is seemingly an inversion of historical cases of prosecution of science teachers over the teaching of evolution, portrayed in films such as Inherit the Wind.[6] As with God's Not Dead, critics felt that atheists were again portrayed as flat stereotypes and as unrealistic, scheming villains.[7] God's Not Dead 2 was released on April 1, 2016.[8] It was the final film role for Fred Dalton Thompson, who died in November 2015. Despite being a large critical failure, it was moderately successful at the box office, earning $24 million on a $5 million budget, though making for a total gross of almost a third of its predecessor.[9]
