This is the fiftieth issue of Quaker Studies (there were no second issues in the first two years) and my last as Editor. I am really pleased to announce that the editorship is passing into the careful and trusted hands of Rebecca Wynter and Rhiannon Grant from 2022.

The journal has had a varied career. It started as a publication of the Centre for Quaker Studies at the University of Sunderland but quickly became the publication of the Quaker Studies Research Association (QSRA), one of the benefits of membership. Indeed, right until the advent of free online access, courtesy of the Open Library of Humanities a few years ago, the print version was free to all QSRA members. Now, in turn, QSRA membership is free!

Continuum published the journal, redesigning the cover and ensuring it reached the main citation indexes as well being included in EBSCO library packages. Then, for a while, it came back solely into the hands of QSRA before the hugely successful and ongoing relationship with Liverpool University Press and more recently the Open Library of the Humanities. The journal is still primarily looked after through QSRA and an Editorial Board supported by the Association, but is also co-sponsored by the Centre for Research in Quaker Studies and the Quaker Studies Unit of the American Academy of Religion. As well as always having published the annual George Richardson Lecture, the journal is also now an outlet for the student essayist that wins the Lucretia Mott Award (see 26/1).

I have very many memories of editing the journal over the decades. Former Woodbrooke colleague Pam Lunn used to check the copy-editing and proofing and the then QSRA Secretary Gay Pilgrim and I spent many an evening packing up envelopes to send the journal together with various enclosures out to subscribers, putting them into different piles for the postal collection. Thanks to Woodbrooke Administration staff at those crunch moments too for handling the postal calculations. Throughout the Editorial Board has been hugely supportive and helpful. Annual meetings have given way to more pragmatic moments of decision-making but members have always responded promptly and helpfully. The International Advisory Panel have been great ambassadors globally for the journal.

The journal of course primarily relies on authors, reviewers and readers and we have been fortunate to have such a stable and high-quality throughput of material, so ably reviewed, to send out to a willing readership. My great uncle edited Mind for 36 years and it is tempting to carry on. But it is also hugely important to have fresh perspective, energy and creativity and I look forward to all that Rebecca and Rhiannon will bring to this publication. My initial role of getting the journal into a secure and established position is complete, and we can look forward to the next chapter.

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This issue contains so much good scholarship. It begins with the 2021 George Richardson Lecture, postponed from 2020 and ultimately given online by Hugh Pyper in June 2021. It looks at two different approaches to reading Scripture, epitomised by approaches taken by Tolstoy and Kierkegaard, and applies them to an analysis of how Quakers have approached scripture over time. It was an enthralling lecture with over 130 in attendance and it is wonderful to bring you a print version so swiftly.

Hugh Barbour passed away in January 2021 aged 99, and Stephen Angell and Michael Birkel have compiled a piece paying tribute to all he gave the scholarly community, also drawing on memories of former colleagues. I met Hugh a few times only but remember someone with huge passion, enthusiasm and encouragement, so positive about new and innovative work even when it challenged his own ideas. We cannot feature all Quaker studies scholars in this way but it feels very appropriate to do so for Hugh who in many ways was an early pioneer of what we now call the field of Quaker studies.

Margaret Johnston submitted her doctoral thesis on the relationship between Quakers and the mainstream puritan clergy in October 2019 and was working on her corrections when she unexpectedly passed away in November 2020. The University of Birmingham awarded her the degree in respect of all the work she had completed and I have edited one of her thesis chapters to give it a wider readership. Her thesis is based on the key tract exchanges between Quakers and these clergy between 1652 and 1656 and this article looks at the arguments they had over different approaches to practice consequent to their theological differences.

Jennifer Rycenga explores the work of Jonathan Dymond, English Quaker and linen draper, and in particular its influence within the abolitionist movement in the USA. It had a huge impact on non-Quakers and Rycenga argues that a thorough exploration of his moral philosophy helps us see how it epitomised the radical ethos of the 1830s beyond merely its influence within Garrisonian abolitionism.

Paul Harris was one of 35 scholars who presented at the 2016 joint QSRA/CQHA annual conference held at Woodbrooke. His current doctoral work is on the Christology of Joseph John Gurney, but his conference paper, here translated into a full-length article, looked at the response of London Yearly Meeting to the Richmond Declaration of Faith when it came to the 1888 Yearly Meeting. The article looks in detail at the different kinds of reception given the Declaration and analyses the modes in which the Yearly Meeting declined its adoption. Harris sees the response as non-committal and, contrary to previous scholarship, as a combination of evangelical, liberal and conservative narratives all seeking to co-exist. Unity was thus based on a recognition of disagreement.

A research note from Rhiannon Grant and myself concludes the body of this issue. This draws on quantitative and qualitative data collected in 2020 on the history and experience of British Quaker Meetings as they took worship online. It looks in particular at the objections raised by some to online worship and how these contrast with many perceived advantages and benefits and the surprise of some that online worship felt as powerful as in-person Meetings. It concludes by looking at some of the questions, particularly around the nature of community, that will face Quakers as restrictions on in-person meeting ease while others nurture a preference for online worship.

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The pandemic has affected us all in variety of ways, including those of us in academic life. Archives have been closed, campuses shut down and so much has been moved online. Whole new systems and processes have taken time to organise and learn and for many of us these last two years have been a lean time for our scholarly output. The lower number of book reviews in this issue is a direct consequence of all we have been experiencing within higher education. I am grateful to all the authors and reviewers involved in this issue.

Wishing you, as ever, well in all of your work.