To respond, a growing number of companies are offering workplace chaplains to help them better cope with life's problems.

"I think companies are offering more of a variety of things that help workers who are going through a spiritual crisis," says Rev. Diana Dale, executive director of the National Institute of Business and Industrial Chaplains.

While many employers are more accepting of religious expressions by their employees, the rules should be different for the boss, says Ellen Barrosse, CEO of Synchrogenix, a Wilmington-based company with 35 employees that does marketing and advertising and also writes reports for pharmaceutical companies. Barrosse, a devout Catholic, is president of the Wilmington chapter of Legatus, an international organization of Catholic businesspeople, whose mission is to help them grow in their faith. Still, she says she wouldn't put a religious symbol on her office wall, because that could give workers the impression that promotions or assignments depend on sharing her faith.

"How would you feel if your boss had a lot of religious symbols on the office wall relating to a religion you don't belong to?" she says.