Faith and hope give the novel’s characters the strength to persevere in the face of challenges. Within Frannie’s family, her parents serve as role models of religious devotion. The death of their infant daughter, Lila, led them to begin attending church regularly, and Mama’s faith helps her recover from the pain of her pregnancy losses and be joyful for Sean and Frannie: “Every morning, she’d get out of bed and hug me and Sean, calling us her gifts from God, her unbroken promises, her little lives” (42). In addition, Frannie’s parents lean on their faith amid the uncertainty of the current pregnancy. Daddy advises Frannie to follow his example and protect her hope by resisting the urge to “worry about what happened before” and instead focus on “what’s happening now” (59). At first, Frannie struggles to live in the present, but she later incorporates his advice into her personal relationship with faith and hope. Frannie’s parents offer her an example of the comforting power of belief.

Samantha helps Frannie deepen her faith and hope while wrestling with spiritual and material challenges of her own. Samantha’s father devotes his life to his ministry as the preacher at OnePeople Baptist, and the Browns live in poverty. Religion offers Samantha solace amid her family’s financial hardships, and Frannie greatly admires how her best friend’s faith allows her to believe in “[b]ig and surreal things” like the idea that her new classmate represents the second coming of Christ (38). Samantha’s belief kindles Frannie’s longing to cultivate her own spirituality and persuades the protagonist to go to church, a rare occurrence for her. As Frannie reflects, “Samantha saw the real Jesus in the Jesus Boy and maybe I wanted to see that too” (79). However, because Samantha longs for the Jesus Boy to be divine, his humanity is an afterthought to her. For example, she notes scriptural parallels to the Jesus Boy’s tears and search for belonging, but she doesn’t intervene when he’s bullied or attempt to befriend the lonely boy. Significantly, Frannie, not Samantha, comes to Trevor’s aid, and this confuses Samantha because he’s a bully and Frannie doesn’t “even hardly go to church” (108). Woodson uses Samantha’s cognitive dissonance to point out that religious fervor is neither a prerequisite nor a guarantee that someone will do the right thing. Over the course of the novel, Samantha encourages Frannie to reflect on matters of faith and hope, and Frannie aspires to return the favor by helping her best friend “see the Jesus inside the boy inside the Jesus Boy” (116). Through Samantha, Woodson depicts a person who finds refuge from worldly problems in religion but is still learning how to put her beliefs into action.

Frannie’s budding faith and hope shape her growth throughout the story. At the start of the novel, she is deeply concerned about her mother’s physical and mental health as well as the suffering and unkindness in the world as a whole. Although she isn’t particularly religious, she craves the hope that faith offers others in her life, saying, “If Jesus came back to this world—I don’t know what I’d want from him. I know what I’d ask though. […] [H]ow do you have hope?” (43). As the novel continues, Frannie’s reflections on spiritual questions help her embrace faith and hope. Ultimately, she advances her own character development by realizing that “hope is always all around” and that there is a “little bit of Jesus inside” of everyone that helps them to act with hope and compassion (91). Woodson posits that a key aspect of hope is persevering in the face of uncertainty—a belief that she underscores by choosing not to reveal the outcome of Mama’s pregnancy. Over the course of the novel, Frannie learns to live in the present with faith and hope despite the challenges that may lie ahead for her and her loved ones.