Father Murphy

This was a TV series from the 1980s. Wiki sums up the plot thus: "It starred [...] actor Merlin Olsen as an 1870s frontiersman named John Michael Murphy who teams up with prospector Moses Gage (Moses Gunn) to shelter a group of orphans who are being threatened with a workhouse." This would actually disqualify it as a religious series. I have to admit, upon watching the first few minutes of the trailer, I was thinking "this is too professional to be Christian." There seem to be though, if not explicit Christian messages, at the very least some hints. The Amazon description reads "Burly drifter John Murphy (Merlin Olsen) becomes the unlikely caretaker of a group of orphaned children growing up in America[']s Wild West. Touched by their plight, he poses as a priest with lovely local school teacher Mae Woodward (Katherine Cannon) and his miner buddy (Moses Gunn) assisting with the children. Together this makeshift family gets involved in a series of adventures, encountering unscrupulous businessmen, gamblers, horse rustlers, bank robbers and much more!" Not to say Satan himself! It reminds me too of the themes of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, that also explores the idea of redeeming the unruly West in the late nineteenth postbellum era.