From an article titled “Message in Music: Pastor explores spiritual themes in Grateful Dead tunes” by Gretchen Murray, published in the Traverse City (MI) Record-Eagle January 6, 2007:
… 40 years since the group got its start and 12 years after the death of lead guitarist Jerry Garcia silenced their music, some people who didn’t get the message then are revisiting the Grateful Dead and finding a lyrical connection to religion and spirituality. That link is something Pastor Chip Roush of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Grand Traverse discovered. He plans to share it with his congregation in an upcoming three-part series, “Searching for the Sound: The Spirituality of the Grateful Dead.†The worship series begins Jan. 14 with “Fire from the Ice: The Religious Humanism of the Grateful Dead.â€
“I use the Grateful Dead as a connective theme for several reasons,†Roush said. “It helps make our religious message relevant and accessible. We can derive wisdom from the Grateful Dead by first realizing that they were not all wasted drug users and secondly, there can be a human approach to religion. Because it comes from a ‘surprising’ source, people may be open to this wisdom in a different way than they would be to the usual Sunday sermon.â€