My grandson Corwin and I were visiting a patient at Castle Medical Center and stopped in the little chapel to admire the stained glass of the Ko'olaus.

A picture of Jesus hung nearby, and I asked Corwin if he knew who it was.

He shook his head "no," so I explained that some people believe him to be the son of God.

"Oh," Corwin said. "Did he die in this hospital or did they just put his picture on the wall?"

It got me thinking that maybe we've gone too far in sanitizing our public institutions and popular culture of things religious.

I'm not in favor of tacking the Ten Commandments to every courthouse wall or having public-school teachers lead their classes in prayer to one God out of the many worshiped in this country.

But neither is it right to tiptoe around religion as though it's some kind of stain.

A 9-year-old should know who Jesus is — not necessarily as an object of devotion, but at least as one of the world's most important historical figures.

I wasn't raised in a strongly religious home, nor were my children or grandchildren.

I have no regrets; we've all managed to find our way to decent and ethical lives.

But when I was Corwin's age, I had a keen awareness of religion and its icons because it was all around me.

My friends came from a variety of faiths, and we discussed the differences. We didn't pray in school, but we learned the religious significance of holidays such as Christmas and Hanukkah.

Then, Protestants, Catholics and Jews comprised most of the religious landscape.

Today the country is far more diverse, as Hawai'i has always been. By some estimates, there are now more Buddhists in the United States than Episcopalians and as many Muslims as Jews. In all, some 2,000 religions are practiced.

There's legitimate need to acknowledge this diversity with sensitivity and inclusiveness in public displays of religion. We must never impose religion on those who don't want it, or use our public institutions to promote one faith over others.

But neither do we have to bury religion to the point that it's absent from the world young people travel in.

Public-school Christmas programs are more likely to be about Charlie Brown, Lucy and Linus than Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Easter is more about rabbits than resurrection.

Characters who take their religion seriously are seldom seen in popular entertainment that reflects every kind of diversity but the religious.

I fear Corwin's generation is missing out on a chance to appreciate religion as a feast of noble ideas we can tap to enrich our lives.

By time I reached high school, I had been bar mitzvahed a Jew and was active in youth fellowship programs of the Methodist, Congregational and Episcopal churches. I attended Buddhist, Baptist and Catholic events with friends.

OK, I admit that an attraction was that church functions were one of the few places you could find girls out on school nights.

But I drew something important from each experience and have often reflected on the spiritual values I was exposed to at turning points in my life.

Wouldn't we be far richer if we embraced and celebrated our glorious religious diversity instead of feeling threatened by it?

If we look at common threads of most religions — the Golden Rule, the notion that we serve ourselves best by serving others first, the admonition to hate the sin but love the sinner — it's easy to see there is more to unite us spiritually than divide us.

David Shapiro, a veteran Hawai'i journalist, can be reached by e-mail at dave@volcanicash.net.