I use Emacs for most things, but the fact that elisp isn't multithreaded made gnus a painful experience for me. I've had much better luck using Mutt--and setting the program's editor command to emacsclient -nw.

Sounds like this guy had a similar experience:

http://jfm3-repl.blogspot.com/2007/10/emacs-tricks-7-do-not-...