1. Jaroslav Pelikan's father was pastor of Trinity Slovak Lutheran Church in Chicago, Illinois.
16 Facts About Jaroslav Pelikan
1. 2.
Jaroslav Pelikan's paternal grandfather was a Lutheran pastor in Chicago, and in 1902, a charter founder, and later president of, the Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, which until 1958 was known as the Slovak Evangelical Lutheran Church, a strictly conservative orthodox church of the Augsburg Confession.
3.
Jaroslav Pelikan did not confine his studies to Roman Catholic and Protestant theological history, but embraced that of the Christian East.
4.
Jaroslav Pelikan wrote more than 30 books, including the five-volume The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine.
5.
Jaroslav Pelikan joined Yale University in 1962 as the Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History and in 1972 was named Sterling Professor of History, a position he held until achieving emeritus status in 1996.
6.
Jaroslav Pelikan's winning entry mentioned the martini first, but Jaroslav Pelikan explained that it seemed no less than fitting to have the aperitif come first.
7.
Jaroslav Pelikan was appointed to numerous leadership positions in American intellectual life.
8.
Jaroslav Pelikan was the president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an elected member of the American Philosophical Society.
9.
Jaroslav Pelikan's lecture became the basis for his book The Vindication of Tradition.
10.
President Bill Clinton appointed Jaroslav Pelikan to serve on the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities.
11.
Jaroslav Pelikan received honorary degrees from 42 universities around the world.
12.
In 2004, having received the John W Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Human Sciences, an honor he shared with the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, Pelikan donated his award of $500,000 to Saint Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, of which he was a trustee.
13.
For most of his life Jaroslav Pelikan was a Lutheran and was a pastor in that tradition.
14.
Jaroslav Pelikan died on May 13,2006, at his home in Hamden, Connecticut, at the age of 82, after a seventeen-month battle with lung cancer.
15.
Jaroslav Pelikan was interred at Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven, Connecticut, on May 17,2006.
16.
Jaroslav Pelikan was honored by a memorial service in Yale's Battell Chapel on October 10,2006, with speeches by distinguished scholars and musical performances by cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the Yale Russian Chorus.