‘MURDER ORDAINED’ MORE CLERICAL SIN

From Scandal Ordained to “Murder Ordained.”

Given the gossipy, trust-breaking saga of the PTL’s unholier-than-thou Jim and Tammy Bakker, what the Christian church doesn’t need now is a network miniseries depicting a revered small-town pastor as philandering and murderous.

What it doesn’t need is exactly what it’s getting.

The two-part “Murder Ordained”--at 9 p.m. Sunday and Tuesday on CBS (Channels 2 and 8)--is a supposedly fact-based rendering of a sensational double-homicide that resulted in a Lutheran pastor in Emporia, Kan., Tom Bird, and his part-time secretary, Lorna Anderson, being sent to prison.

The story is a shocking, suspenseful thriller. More about that shortly.

Even more pertinent is how “Murder Ordained” may feed what Rev. Jerry Falwell described this week as a “general distrust” of the church emerging from recent scandalous revelations about PTL and the conduct of the Bakkers.

“A lot of faith has been shattered,” said Falwell, now heading the PTL ministry from which the Bakkers were banished after charges of dubious financial dealings and Jim Bakker’s admission of an adulterous sexual encounter in 1980.

“Right now,” Falwell added, “national credibility for the cause of Christ is at an all-time low.”

Well, maybe not. Surely the vast majority of the nation’s Christians can distinguish between the wider “cause of Christ” and the problems of a TV ministry that paid its leader a whopping $1.6 million last year. The Bakkers may have built a crackerjack resort and amusement park in Fort Mill, S.C., but Heritage USA and the PTL are a micro-footnote in the sweep of Christianity.

It’s the cause of TV evangelism--not Christ--that’s been diminished.

Lump the Bakkers with the Rev. Oral Roberts’ chats with a money-grubbing God in Tulsa and you get Fibber McGee’s closet of TV evangelism: It all comes tumbling down. And recent charges of fund-raising improprieties against other TV evangelists don’t help much, either.

This is open season, evidenced by the unseemly, snickering tone of some of the local TV coverage of the Bakkers--as if the mismanagement and potential collapse of the PTL were a joke instead of a tragedy. Ask the little old lady who gave her last $50 to PTL how funny it is.

The clergy--despite pumping millions into the nation’s local TV stations through the purchase of air time--usually gets a raw deal on the airwaves when it comes to entertainment programs. The pious are frequently the butts of jokes, and reborn Christians are stereotyped as mindless buffoons. Your basic fallen cleric a la Richard Chamberlain in “The Thorn Birds”--the high-toned goody two-shoes tripping over his own sanctity--is always a favorite.

So now, on the heels of all this and the woeful Bakkers, comes the evil Rev. Tom Bird. The cumulative impact of the negativism remains to be seen.

Ironically, Bird (Terry Kinney) has dreams of becoming a TV preacher in “Murder Ordained,” which opens in 1983 with the discovery of the body of Bird’s wife, Sandy (Annabella Price), beside an overturned white station wagon in the Cottonwood River. Although Kansas Highway Patrolman John Rule (Keith Carradine) suspects foul play, the death is ruled accidental. Who would want to kill that nice young pastor’s wife? No, the car must have missed the one-lane Rocky Ford Bridge and carried poor Sandy Bird into the river.

But when Tom Bird and Lorna Anderson (JoBeth Williams) discreetly and tenderly touch hands immediately after Sandy’s funeral, you suspect the truth. Then a flashback confirms deep fissures in the Bird and Anderson marriages and a budding affair between the flirty Lorna and the outwardly straitlaced Tom. Later, Lorna’s husband, Marty (Terrence Knox), will be slain under puzzling circumstances.

Kinney is convincing as Tom, the innocent-looking Faith Lutheran Church pastor and father of three who is now serving a life sentence after conviction for his wife’s murder and for soliciting the murder of Martin Anderson. Williams is just as believable as Anderson, the mother of four, who is also serving time for soliciting her husband’s murder. These are vile people.

Lorna has since claimed that Tom was the one who murdered her husband. He continues to proclaim his innocence of all charges and to deny even having had an affair with Lorna, insisting that his alleged love letters found in her possession were intended only as moral and spiritual support.

The only hero in this script by James Sadwith and director Mike Robe is Rule, the low-key, Gary Cooperish state trooper whose suspicions (“This ain’t no accident”) were not acted upon by an initial Kansas Bureau of Investigation probe, depicted here as sloppy and inept.

Some of Bird’s parishioners continue to maintain that he’s innocent and that Lorna, who had a reputation as the town tart, lied about their affair.

What most angers the Lutheran Church about “Murder Ordained,” however, is that it shows Bird believing he is mandated by God. On a superficial level, he is motivated by his attraction to Lorna. On a deeper level, he is a cleric whose faith is perverse, one who seeks to justify his actions on religious grounds.

“You have to marvel, hon, marvel at the order of God’s plan,” he tells Lorna about collecting $5,000 insurance from his wife’s death, money they can now use to hire someone to murder Lorna’s husband.

When Lorna is worried about a potentially damaging witness, Tom assures her: “They’ll never take his word over yours. You’re a Christian woman. . . .”

And when things are going badly for them both, she reminds him: “I thought you said God would protect us.”

“This is absolutely just another trial,” he replies. “Didn’t God test Abraham?”

Because no one other than Lorna and Tom is present during these devastating chats, we’ve no proof that they took place.

Yet the ordained in the miniseries title, “Murder Ordained,” suggests that Bird “is a psychotic madman who hears God and is compelled by God to commit these crimes,” complained Rev. Paul Devantier, executive director of the board for communications services of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, for which Bird had formed the congregation in Emporia.

“We’ve seen no indication of that in the testimony,” Devantier said by phone from St. Louis. “This is an example of how the docudrama can be misused, the blurring of fact and fiction.”

“Murder Ordained” is tagged with the standard docudrama disclaimer: The story is “based upon actual events,” but “some of the characters and incidents portrayed and the names used herein are fictitious. . . .”

Which characters? Which incidents? Which names? Pick a straw, and lots of luck. You’re on your own.

“Murder Ordained” is a production of Zev Braun Pictures and Interscope Communications Inc., which joined forces in a frenzied battle for TV rights to the Bird/Anderson case that drew Hollywood to Emporia en masse. ABC and NBC also were considering airing versions of the story.

Whopper crime stories are a sizzling ticket: Witness the recent competing TV accounts of the Frances Schreuder murder case and the recently announced plans for an NBC miniseries based on the Billionaire Boys Club murder case. And don’t forget those ever-popular fallen preachers.

“Jim and Tammy Ordained.” Can it be far behind?