Bethlehem today

A RECTOR in Dorset can no longer bring himself to sing the carol “O little town of Bethlehem”,

after visiting the Holy Land with parish ioners last month and seeing how much the town had

changed since an earlier visit he made in 1995.

The Revd Stephen Coulter, Rector of Pimperne in Blandford Forum, told his congregation on

his return that having been confronted by the security wall, the checkpoints, and the plight of the

people, he could not sing the words “How still we see thee lie”.

He showed them a carved nativity scene into which a Bethlehem carpenter had inserted a

fence sepa rating the manger and the three Wise Men, and described the town today as

“indeed a place of dark streets and of hopes and fears”. The carol has, with the congregation’s

consent, been removed from this year’s carol service.