The Alabama Murders - Part 1: The True Church

Summary

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Revisionist History: The Alabama Murders – Part 1: The True Church

Podcast: Revisionist History
Episode: The Alabama Murders – Part 1: The True Church
Host: Malcolm Gladwell
Date: October 2, 2025

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Overview

The first episode of The Alabama Murders series sets the stage for a decades-spanning tragedy originating in Florence, Alabama, in 1988. Malcolm Gladwell explores how a seemingly isolated act — a preacher’s affair and a subsequent murder — leads to a cascade of suffering that entangles an entire community, culminating in profound questions about morality, justice, and the failures of systems meant to alleviate pain. The episode especially focuses on the social structures and beliefs of the Church of Christ, introducing listeners to its traditions, insularity, and struggles with grace and forgiveness.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Introducing the Case and Its Ripple Effects

• Gladwell’s Central Question:
  Gladwell opens by asking why, when trying to address pain and suffering, do systems and communities so often make things worse?

  “Why have we created a system that in trying to respond to suffering, all too often makes suffering worse?” (03:30, Malcolm Gladwell)

• Porterfield’s Perspective as a Psychologist:
  Dr. Kate Porterfield shares her experience counseling a man on death row, “Kenny,” who focused on the beauty of his family's love rather than the trauma of his botched execution:

  “He wanted to talk for the first probably two hours of our visit about how beautiful his goodbyes were and the love he received from his family as he was going into the execution.” (02:12, Kate Porterfield)

2. The Shoals and the Church of Christ Social Fabric

• Setting:
  Florence, and neighboring towns in "the Shoals," are painted as isolated and deeply bound by tradition.

  • “There’s no interstate that runs through Florence. There’s no major airport, so it’s a little bit of a closed society almost.” (05:11, Grant Asbel)

• Religious Context:
  The area is a stronghold of the Church of Christ, a conservative Protestant denomination characterized by strict adherence to scripture, a cappella singing, and simplicity.

• Insularity and Social Control:
  The church is described as both loving and potentially suffocating, with a culture where secrets and shame are masked for the sake of appearances.

  “The Church of Christ is a very small world, is a family.” (11:35, Malcolm Gladwell) “When someone says, I'm a member of the Church of Christ, that means ... they are members of the true church that restored New Testament Christianity and everybody else is wrong …” (12:42, Lee Camp)

3. The Rules and Consequences

• Doctrinal Rigidity:

  • Divorce only permitted if infidelity is proven.
  • Women cannot lead services.
  • Strict rules against dancing, “mixed bathing” (i.e., co-ed swimming), and other forms of "temptation."
  • Violators may be "disfellowshipped"—formally and publicly shunned.

  “There’s always the danger that you’ll be kind of cut off. … The church would practice this sort of disfellowshipping ... you couldn’t be a member of good standing in the church.” (14:18, Lee Camp) “If you dance, you’re going to lust. And if you lust, you’re going to go to hell.” (15:57, Lee Camp)

• Shame vs. Grace:
  The environment can produce overwhelming shame, especially in the absence of a church culture that truly embraces grace.

  “There’s a sense of fear … always the danger that you’ll be kind of cut off … unless some sort of public statement of repentance.” (14:18, Lee Camp) “In the absence of grace, there is no relief from transgression.” (28:42, Gladwell)

4. Charles Sennett: The Preacher at the Center

• Background:
  Charles Sennett: Preacher’s son, charismatic, successful church builder, but with severe personal failings.

  • Married Elizabeth Dorlean, had a seemingly ideal church family.
  • Rumors of affairs in previous and current congregations.
  • Fired from a prior church after an affair, fell into depression and was hospitalized.
  • Significant debt and unstable mental health.

  “He was the picture of a preacher’s wife … There are still lots of people in the Shoals who remember the Sennetts.” (17:16, Susan Moseley) “He must have been charismatic. Yes, I would say very charismatic. My mother called him a ladies man.” (20:12, Charlie Bill)

• Community Denial and Secrecy:
  Sennett’s failings were well masked; the church community seemed determined to look away or excuse rumors.

  "The viciousness was there, that he could do something like that, I don't know.” (34:00, Community member)
  "He worked very hard to make sure nobody knew outside that tight circle of biological family." (25:37, Rodney Plunkett)

5. Shame, Grace, and the Dynamics of Sin

• No Escape Hatch:
  Sennett is trapped: divorce is unthinkable, scandal must be kept silent, and his role requires a mask of perfection.

  “There’s no viable route to a greater happiness with the other woman because it’s simply not going to be permitted unless you leave the community that you probably think is the community that you have to be a part of if you’re not going to go to hell.” (30:39, Lee Camp)

• Failure Cascade:
  Gladwell draws a historical analogy—a proverb (“For want of a nail, the shoe was lost…”)—to describe how each small failure, compounded by secrecy or shame, leads to disaster.

  “The Alabama Murders is about a classic failure cascade, only ... the ripples were caused not by mechanical or institutional defects, but failures of character, of justice, of compassion.” (33:25, Gladwell)

6. Foreshadowing the Broader Impact

• The episode ends by indicating that this initial tragedy led to more deaths, legal battles, and ethical dilemmas—including botched executions and state-sanctioned punishment—hinting at the systemic failures and personal reckonings still to be examined in future episodes.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the spiritual environment:

  “If you fell out of an airplane and you said a cuss word on the way down… then you might, your soul might be lost to damnation for eternity.” (29:06, Grant Asbel)

• On community’s double-edge:

  “Like, I love and hate churches of Christ. You know, I love them and I have hated them.” (14:18, Lee Camp)

• On grace’s absence:

  “I think he was probably her minister… she was probably seeking some counseling from him.” (21:00, Charlie Bill)

• Joking about forgiveness and crime:

  “There was this joke that said it was easier to get forgiveness in the Church of Christ for murdering somebody than it was to be divorced.” (31:25, Lee Camp)

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Timeline of Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment Description | |-----------|----------------------------------------------------------| | 01:40 | Malcolm meets Kate Porterfield and learns of "Kenny" | | 03:04 | Introduction of the botched execution and case relevance | | 05:21 | Grant Asbel describes Florence and its insularity | | 09:43 | Introduction of Lee Camp, Church of Christ theology | | 12:29 | Distinctions of Church of Christ and denominationalism | | 14:18 | Lee Camp reflects on love/hate for the church | | 17:20 | Susan Moseley on Elizabeth Sennett's character | | 21:00 | Hearsay about preacher’s affair in the congregation | | 25:37 | On masking shame and secrets within the church | | 26:53 | Gladwell queries tradition’s role in dysfunction | | 29:06 | Grant Asbel on fear of damnation for small infractions | | 31:25 | “Easier to get forgiveness for murder than divorce” joke | | 33:25 | Gladwell introduces the “failure cascade” metaphor | | 34:00 | Community members questioning how much was known |

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Tone & Original Language

Gladwell’s tone is contemplative, empathetic, and slightly wry, engaging multiple local voices and experts to create a detailed, emotionally rich portrait of a tightly bound religious community confronting the consequences of its own rigidity. The episode balances careful analysis with personal anecdotes and genuine curiosity.

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Conclusion

Part 1 of The Alabama Murders sets up a complex narrative of faith, secrecy, and the ways in which communal attempts to maintain purity and order can inadvertently set the stage for tragedy. By examining the Church of Christ’s culture of rules and the crushing weight of shame, Gladwell draws listeners into understanding not just the crimes themselves, but the social and spiritual dynamics that made them possible—and why resolving pain sometimes only amplifies it.

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Stay tuned for Part 2, as Gladwell continues to unravel how the cascade of suffering spread beyond the original tragedy, implicating not only those involved, but the community and the state itself.

Transcript

[A]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[B]

Malcolm Glabel here. I'm excited to share that Revisionist History is a Signal Awards finalist in two categories. The Signal Awards recognize the top podcasts that define culture. Our episode the Joe Rogan Intervention is up for best conversation starter. And our episode Running Hot is up for best writing. We're thrilled to be nominated and from now until October 9th, you can help us win by voting for us. [e-mail] that's vote.signal S I G N A L award dot com. We're thankful for your support. Pushkin. Hello.

[A]

Hello.

[B]

Malcolm here. Before we get to the episode, I want to let you know you can get this entire season now ad free by subscribing to Revisionist History on Pushkin Plus. Sign up on the show page on Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin FM Plus. Pushkin subscribers can access ad free episodes, full audiobooks, exclusive binges and bonus content for all Pushkin shows. A little while ago, a friend of mine told me, you have to meet this person I know, Kate Porterfield. She's got the strangest job in America. So I did. We got together, Porterfield and I, in a little conference room in Manhattan. I just want to understand how you ended up where you are.

[C]

So you're kind of viewing, as we're just talking, you're thinking about whether there's something here that'll evolve over time that you would imagine being putting in the podcast. Is that kind of what you're thinking?

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

Porterfield is a psychologist. We talked for a few hours, then again and again, one conversation leading to another, until she began to talk about a case that had affected her deeply. Although she doesn't use the word case. She says, person a man on death row.

[C]

When I first went to see Kenny, so now it had been two months since the execution attempt. He wanted to talk for the first probably two hours of our visit about how beautiful his goodbyes were and the love he received from his family as he was going into the execution. That's what he wanted to start with. And I found this so powerful and also fascinating, honestly, as a clinician, because what I first thought was, oh, he's avoiding, right? He can't talk about the execution. He talked to me about love for probably two, two and a half hours, to the point where I had to say, you know, this is incredible and I'm so happy you're sharing it, and I'm not surprised. I also though, I want to know what happened.

[B]

What happened was a botched execution punishment for a crime that took place over 30 years before. A river of blood that had already claimed the lives of three others. Kate Porterfield told me her version of events. Then I went out and got other people's versions of what happened. And that's where the story I'm about to tell you comes from. I want to figure out why this case went on for as long as it did, why it took so many bizarre and unsettling turns along the way. And the other question, maybe the more important question is why have we created a system that in trying to respond to suffering, all too often makes suffering worse?

[C]

He made me really pause and think a lot. Watching someone only start from a place of love after something so horrible was. I had never seen that before.

[B]

Welcome to Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This is a special seven episode series, the Alabama Murders Episode one the True Church. So we're now in. Are we in Florence here? Yes. This story takes place in northwestern Alabama in an area called the Shoals. The so called Alabama black belt. The broad flat swath of fertile farmland where the old antebellum cotton plantations were established is several hours drive to the south. This is Rolling Hills, Appalachia, not the Mississippi Delta. Four towns on either side of the Tennessee River. Sheffield, Tuscumbia, Mussel Shoals and Florence. Sheffield is working class, struggling Muscle Shoals is a spiritual home of rhythm and blues. Tuscumbia is famous for being the birthplace of Helen Keller. Florence is the largest, a graceful town of beautiful pre war buildings with a Frank Lloyd Wright house downtown.

[E]

You know, there's no interstate that runs through Florence. There's no major airport, so it's a little bit of a closed society almost. It's really neat.

[B]

I started going to Alabama after talking to Kate Porterfield. And on one of my first trips I met a man named Grant Asbel, a preacher, early 40s, big beard, baseball captain, though not on Sunday morning of course. He was my guide to Florence.

[E]

You know, there's good music, there's good art, there's good food, but you just don't happen here. You have to want to come to Florence.

[B]

This is the place where it all started, with a personal transgression, a matter of the heart by another preacher, a man named Charles Sennett.

[E]

I was only seven years old when it happened, but I remember it being really disconcerting because if you're in this group and like in this area in particular, I mean you've been to Florence, Florence, you don't get here by accident. And so the idea that someone within this framework could do something like Charles Sennett did was very disruptive. It was talked about kind of in hushed tones. I was talking to our local. He goes to church with us here. He's actually the. The historian for the city of Florence. And he was telling me that one of the preachers in one of the churches in town, while that was going on, got up in the pulpit and said, charles Senate is a faithful Christian brother. The things that are being said about him are lies with the idea, right? He is a faithful Church of Christ member and almost incapable of this kind of thing.

[B]

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. October 10th is World Mental Health Day, and this year, let's flip the script and focus the attention on thanking the therapists who have made an impact on people's lives. Thank you, therapists. As it turns out, as a therapist who's made an enormous impact on my life, my mom, who I'm happy to say put all of her considerable training and expertise in the service of giving me and my brothers a happy home when we were kids and who I have watched over her 94 years enrich and support the lives of countless other people. So, mom, in honor of World Mental Health Day, thank you for being so kind and understanding and a reminder of how much value and love therapists can bring to the world. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, having served over 5 million people globally. And it works with an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for a live session based on over 1.7 million client reviews. This World Mental Health Day, we're celebrating the therapists who helped millions of people take a step forward. If you're ready to find the right therapist for you, BetterHelp can help you start that journey. Our listeners get 10% off their first [e-mail] Gladwell that's better. H E L P.com Gladwell Malcolm Gladwell here. I'm excited to share that Revisionist History is a Signal Awards finalist in two categories. The Signal Awards recognize the top podcasts that define culture. Our episode, the Joe Rogan Intervention is up for best conversation starter. And our episode Running Hot is up for best writing. We're thrilled to be nominated and from now until October 9th, you can help us win by voting for us. [e-mail] that's vote.signal S I G N A L award.com we're thankful for your support. In Alabama, the Shoals is the spiritual center of the Protestant denomination known as the Church of Christ. There are many, many Church of Christ congregations within an hour's drive of Florence. And I don't think that any of the things we're going to explore over the course of this series will make sense unless you first understand something about this denomination. If I blindfolded you and put you in a early 1980s Church of Christ congregation, how long would it take you before you knew you were in Church of Christ?

[D]

I would know in about three minutes or less.

[B]

This is Lee Camp, who has taught theology for years at Lipscomb University in Nashville, one of the most prestigious of the many universities around the United States affiliated with the Church of Christ. What would be the tip off?

[D]

Well, the singing would be a cappella is the first thing. And so, you know, the only place you're going to find a cappella singing is probably either going to be Mennonites or Church of Christ, maybe Church of the Brethren. And then there are going to be certain phrases that are going to get said that would just be a tip off that, you know, this is where they are in the prayers. They're going to say, lord, guard, guide and direct us. I don't know. There would just be language like that that I would immediately know.

[B]

By the way, for those of you who know something about country music, what do Waylon Jennings, Roy Orbison, Loretta Lynn, Glenn Campbell, Dwight Yocum, Pat Boone, Crystal Gale, I could go on. All have in common? They all came out of the acapella tradition of the Church of Christ. It's not Sunday morning. I just take you to a church. It's empty. How long does it take you to know that you're in a Church of Christ? There's no one in there. You look around, what do you see? That's the tip off? No organ.

[D]

There's no organ. And just the whole architecture is very, very simple. There's lack of pretense. There's certainly no art on the walls. There's no Stations of the Cross. There's pews and there's. On the one side at the front is going to be a board that shows attendance contribution numbers. On the other side is going to be a board that has the hymn numbers that you slide in with the numbers. And in the middle is going to be a simple pulpit.

[B]

I know about the Church of Christ because my best friend is the screenwriter Charles Randolph, whose father Dale was a Church of Christ minister who went to Lipscomb. And once, when I was visiting Lipscomb, the same school where Lee Camp teaches, a little old lady Came up to me and said, are you Dale Randolph's famous son, Chuck's friend? Yes, I am. And while I'm playing this game, I should point out that halfway through my conversation with Grant Asbell I discovered that he did his doctorate at Lipscomb with Lee Camp. The point is that the Church of Christ is a very small world, is a family. Now, you're from Alabama.

[D]

I am from Alabama.

[B]

You were born in Talladega. Talladega.

[D]

And not Talladega or Talladega, it's Talladega.

[B]

Talladega. And you grew up in the Church of Christ.

[D]

I did.

[B]

When you say that you are, that you belong to the Church of Christ, what are you saying about. What does that mean? How's that different from I'm a Baptist?

[D]

Well, it depends on who you're talking to and where they are in their experience of churches of Christ. But when someone says, I'm a member of the Church of Christ, that means that they are members of the true church that restored New Testament Christianity and everybody else is wrong and that this is the true church. That's not a denomination, that's not Protestant, it's not Catholic. It's just the true church.

[B]

In the taxonomy of Southern Protestantism, there are the Pentecostals, the singing, the swaying, speaking in tongues, emotion. The Church of Christ isn't that. Then there are the Fundamentalists, the Southern Baptists, Fire and brimstone. The Church of Christ isn't that either. The Baptists and the Pentecostals can sometimes go on all Sunday afternoon in a Church of Christ. You're out in an hour. These are the people of the Book. There are said to be more advanced degrees in the Church of Christ leadership than any of the Southern denominations. They're a church of rules and certainties, simplicity and clarity. A church inspired by the idea that anyone who studies the Bible, reads it closely and thoughtfully, can discern the path to salvation. That's the good part, the beautiful part. But the other part, and by the way, no one is more willing to acknowledge the limitations of the Church of Christ than people who belong to the Church of Christ. Is that the rules, the certainty, the intimacy can become a straitjacket.

[D]

Like, I love and hate churches of Christ. You know, I love them and I have hated them. And you know, I love them because I've spent my life doing what I've done with my life because of what I learned in my church. You know, I was loved by my church. I was loved by the people in that church. And yet, at the same time, the traditions in the latter part of the 20th century have done a lot of damage to a lot of people, including me. There's a sense of fear, and there's always the danger that you'll be kind of cut off. And so it was kind of fear of just saying you're not okay. You know, you don't toe the line. And so the church would practice this sort of, on occasion, would practice this sort of disfellowshipping, we called it, where you could literally be socially, you know, estranged, socially disciplined publicly. And then apart from some sort of public statement of repentance, you couldn't be a member of good standing in the church.

[B]

You cannot divorce your wife unless there is a documented case of adultery, full stop. Women cannot participate in a church service. Full stop. Singing must be a cappella. Instruments are a frivolity.

[D]

You've got, you know, all these taboos around. No dancing, because if you dance, you're going to lust. And if you lust, you're going to go to hell. You know. No mixed bathing, we called it. Which means you're not swimming around people of opposite sex, because if you do, you're going to lust and you'll go to hell. One of my favorite stories about kind of illustrating this was that we were on a youth group trip in another town and we were pulling out of the church to go to lunch break, and the preacher driving the van, van full of, you know, impressionable 14, 15 year olds, he looks to the left and there's this guy jogging down the sidewalk in his jogging shorts. And we were not permitted to wear shorts in public because of the lust thing. And this guy's jogging down the sidewalk and the preacher looks at him and he says, he looks real nice in those jogging shorts. He'll look real nice in hell.

[B]

This is the world. Charles Sennett, the man at the center of our story belong to. He was born in West Virginia. His father was a Church of Christ preacher. He got married to Elizabeth Dorlean in 1962. She was the picture of a preacher's wife. They had two sons together. And by the time she was in her early 40s, Elizabeth was already a grandmother. There are still lots of people in the shoals who remember the sentence.

[A]

She was a typical love my grandbabies let me run home, make chocolate chip cookies and keep them over the weekend with their family. Their parents can go out and have a date night.

[B]

This is Susan Moseley, a nurse at a local weight loss clinic who became close with Elizabeth, you know, brought them.

[A]

Babies with her A lot of times. And they. And I made a little thing in there in that little exercise room, little table, chair or coloring books so they could sit there and color while she was being here.

[B]

Charles got a doctorate in divinity in the 1970s, became the preacher at a Church of Christ in Jasper, Alabama, a small town two hours south of the Shoals. He was good. In a few years, he tripled the size of the church. He was handsome, dynamic, a wonderful singing voice in the best church of Christ tradition. At some point in his 30s, at the point his career seemed ascendant, things began to go sideways for Charles Sennnett. There were rumors of some indiscretion at the Church of Christ in Jasper, an affair. The elders fired him. If you want to trace the precise moment at which things began to unravel, perhaps it was here because there is a version of events in which he could have stayed in Jasper for his whole career, built upon his success there. To be a minister at a successful church of Christ is a position of real status. There's a kind of free market in that world. When there's a hot young preacher in town, people will leave their churches and join the rising star Senate. Was that Rising star? But then he lost it all. He was despondent. His family came upon him one night curled up in a ball on the couch. He'd had a nervous breakdown. He became suicidal. He ended up spending weeks in a psychiatric hospital in Birmingham. This is the summary from the medical records of the psychiatric facility where he was hospitalized. Exam reveals an unkempt, hostile, rebellious white male. His thought content is preoccupied, his psychomotor agitated and his affect labile. His mood is depressed, his sensorium confused and his tension level tense. His insight is lacking and his judgment is poor. He found another job, then another. Moved to the Shoals and became the preacher at the west side Church of Christ in Sheffield. Small, working class congregation, Little white church, not Jasper. A step down. Starting over.

[A]

A lot of this that I know was hearsay amongst us all.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know how it passes from person to person? Gets bigger or gets smaller. So, yeah, take everything I tell you with a grain of salt because it was all hearsay.

[B]

This is Charlie, Bill and her son Eric. They were members of Charles Sennan's church. And was he. Was he a good preacher?

[A]

Evidently. He must have been charismatic. Yes, I would say very charismatic.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. The point.

[A]

My mother called him a ladies man.

[B]

Oh, really? Oh, your mother had a. She had a. Did she mean that?

[A]

A way of labeling people.

[B]

Did she mean that in a positive way or in a negative way.

[A]

If my grandmother said it, it was negative. Yeah, she was very conservative and very. Yeah, that would have been a very. A very negative thing to say about somebody.

[D]

Maybe.

[A]

I could say it's about as pure Church of Christ as you can get.

[B]

There were whispers about a woman in the west side congregation, Doris.

[A]

We heard the, you know, connected rumors that she was involved. Her husband was having some serious issues. I don't know. I. Reading on it, I almost would think she was seeking. I think he was probably her minister because I think she went to west side One. Yeah, I think so at the time, and that's my understanding. I don't know. Therefore, I would almost say she was probably seeking some counseling from him.

[B]

Charles Sennott was in love with a woman who was not his wife. He had a book of poems in his office called Memories of the Heart with Doris picture in it. There were rumors someone saw a valentine Charles had given Doris. I talked with another former member of the west side Church, Carl Rhoden. We sat in his living room. He had a dog on his lap. I'm just curious. Was he a good.

[F]

Maybe it's a nice fellow you won't be around.

[B]

He was what?

[F]

Nice?

[B]

Yeah.

[F]

I mean, you just couldn't hardly beat him. Somebody be sick. He'd be the first one there with some food, nursing home. He'd be the first one there with something to eat or, you know.

[B]

Was he a good preacher?

[F]

Yeah, as well as. He had a split personality, best I can tell.

[B]

Yeah. Do you remember he had been. It came out during the trial that he had been. He had been at a church in Jasper and had been fired from that job because he was. Same thing. Having an affair with someone in the church.

[F]

See, they should have told us when they fired him, but didn't nobody say nothing about it to him. Yeah, it was all over. You might as well say.

[B]

Yeah, there's no way of there was. He just. Do you remember anything about how he came to the church in the first place? You don't?

[F]

I just remember there, and I don't. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how they got a hold of him or anything.

[B]

So he was really popular. Yeah.

[F]

Yeah, he was a nice fellow. Like I said, he'd be the first one at somebody's house with food, you know, or he was just a nice guy. That's all you make out of him. Nobody would ever thought this. That's what, you know, he would have done something like that.

[B]

In the winter of 1980, 8. Charles and his wife Elizabeth fought. She wanted a divorce, and they both knew what that meant. He shouted at her, I won't lose another church. He was $150,000 in debt from failed business ventures. This on a preacher's salary. His behavior grew erratic. The walls began to close in. He had a secret he could not share, a marriage that was disintegrating, and demons he was desperately trying to keep at bay. He still goes to preach every Sunday, but no one knows the full story of his life. No one, that is, except the only person who would have mattered for Charles Sennett. And that was Go Malcolm Glabel here. I'm excited to share that. Revisionist History is a Signal Awards finalist in two categories. The Signal Awards recognize the top podcasts that define culture. Our episode the Joe Rogan Intervention is up for best conversation starter. And our episode Running Hot is up for best writing. We're thrilled to be nominated, and from now until October 9th, you can help us win by voting for us. [e-mail] that's vote.signal S I G N A L award dot com. We're thankful for your support. One thing I don't understand is he seems completely ill suited for the ministry. He seems volatile. He's having an affair with a congregant. His finances are a mess. He's abusive to his wife. He's. I'm just curious, how does he. How would someone like that enter and survive in the ministry, particularly in a world where people are as conscious of conduct as the Church of Christ community is. He worked very hard to make sure nobody knew outside that tight circle of biological family. I asked a Church of Christ minister named Rodney Plunkett about the case. He knew Charles Sennett. That's not atypical.

[D]

They mask.

[B]

And the amount of effort that must have gone into masking that. Enormous.

[D]

Malcolm.

[B]

It's absolutely enormous. I asked my theologian friend Lee Camp the same question. One of the things I'm trying to understand is we have this man, Church of Christ minister Charles Sennett, in little town northwestern Alabama, who is having an affair and his wife has decided to divorce him. And, you know, I'm wondering were he a, you know, a Mennonite or were he a Muslim or whatever, all those. All those traditions would have would shape his dysfunction in some way. And I'm curious, how does his tradition shape his dysfunction? That's what I'm trying to get at. What's going on inside his head as he processes the kind of his affair, his wife's decision and the chaos of his own life. And he's the pastor of this little white clappard church in a corner of Sheffield.

[D]

Yeah, I mean, who knows, right? But, you know, I would make up that the sense of shame is overwhelming. And when you're in a context of overwhelming shame, it can do terrifying things to the psyche. And in the absence of any sort of constructive grace, and I don't mean by that some flabby sense of, oh, everything's okay, you know, grace, but some sort of constructive sense of grace, you know, it can quickly lead you to all sorts of madness.

[B]

Christian grace, God's unmerited favor and loving kindness, a gift freely given to humanity, unearned and undeserved, a spontaneous act of generosity on God's part, extended to all humanity, regardless of their sin. What Camp was saying and what many others in the Church of Christ came to believe was that their church, particularly their church in that era 40, 50 years ago, did not understand grace. Grant Asbel told me about his uncle, the song leader in a Church of Christ congregation, who once talked a little bit too much about grace and forgiveness at Sunday school and so was let go. The church elders wouldn't even let him finish out his contract. Because if you had deciphered the rules of the Bible, the logic of the Christian text, then there shouldn't be any deviation, should there? It was all crystal clear. And if you started to grant forgiveness for those who strayed from that narrow path, then what incentive did people have to follow the narrow path? That was the thinking. And it's where the shame that Lee Camp was talking about came from. Because in the absence of grace, there is no relief from transgression. People like Aspel and Lee Camp have been trying to push their church in a more forgiving direction, to bring grace into their religious experience. But in the 1980s, in a small town in Alabama, this is what Asbel said.

[E]

The idea behind that is this idea that if you want to one day be judged faithful, you have to have kept these rules. And even to the point where if you break one of the rules, you can ask forgiveness. But the way that it felt as a kid was if you fell out of an airplane and you said a cuss word on the way down and you didn't have a chance to rep of that word before you hit the ground, then you might. Your soul might be lost to damnation for eternity.

[B]

When Lee Camp said, I have loved my church and I have hated my church, this was the part he hated. I think it's interesting that you said, you know, when we think, when we imagine what is going through the mind of someone who's marriage is in trouble, who is in love with another woman, one possible interpretation is that their motivation is genuine in the sense that they have fallen out of love with their wife and in love with someone else and see the possibility for a greater happiness and are willing to endure a certain amount of pain and heartbreak to get to that greater happiness. But that's not. I'm not imagining that's what it is. It's. He is in love with another woman and is consumed with shame over his predicament.

[D]

Yeah, I mean, there's certainly, so far as his church context would be concerned, there's no viable route to a greater happiness with the other woman because it's simply not going to be permitted unless you leave the community that you probably think is the community that you have to be a part of if you're not going to go to hell. I mean, it's that simple, really. Again, I don't want to speculate about what he's thinking, but I would conjecture, given all that we know that I know about that experience, it would be plausible that something like that's going on, which is a.

[B]

Which is a. He's in a. Terrifying. For him, a terrifying place.

[D]

Sure as I'm sure was his wife. There was this joke that said that it was easier to get forgiveness in the Church of Christ for murdering somebody than it was to be divorced.

[B]

There is a proverb that dates back to the Middle Ages that I'm sure you've heard in one version or another. For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. For want of a horse, the rider was lost. For want of a rider, the message was lost. For want of a message, the battle was lost. For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost. All for the want of a nail. The proverb of a lost nail is what's called a failure cascade. One small misstep or mishap leads to a second bigger problem and a third even bigger problem. And finally, at the end of the chain catastrophe, the northeastern blackout. In August of 2003, one of the biggest blackouts in history was a failure cascade. A couple of trees on the Eastlake transmission line outside of Cleveland grew a little bit too tall. And the electrical line at that precise moment, perhaps because of the summer heat, sagged a little bit more than usual and touched the trees. The contact caused a short. The short caused the power that used to run along that line to be rerouted along another line, which overloaded that line, causing an even bigger electrical surge to be rerouted to a another line and on and on, leading to a series of failures that rippled across the entire northeastern grid, leaving 50 million people without electricity. For want of a chainsaw, the power was lost. The Alabama Murders is about a classic failure cascade, only where the ever widening ripples were caused by not by mechanical or institutional defects, but failures of character, of justice, of compassion. Coming up on the Alabama Murders, that.

[A]

The viciousness was there, that he could do something like that, I don't know.

[B]

I answered the call and I got all the information on who done it.

[F]

Who was all involved and all the particulars.

[A]

He was having an affair with a parishioner. There weren't 70 people that went to that church. How did they not know that this was going on?

[B]

I don't know which one of them killed her, I really don't. But I think both of them got what they probably deserved legally and morally. And at the time, we hadn't had.

[E]

An execution in Alabama in a very long time. And I said, sure.

[B]

Well, you know, I didn't know what I was getting into. What is taught either in nursing school or as an EMT or as a doctor cannot be lifted into the death chamber like it's not the same place.

[C]

He would say to himself, turn to the right, to the victim's family and apologize. Turn to the left, tell my family I love him. So he had this little practice. To the right. I'm sorry. To the left. I love you.

[B]

Revisionist History is produced by Lucy Sullivan, Ben Nadaff Haffrey and Nina Byrd Lawrence. Additional reporting by Ben Nadaff Haffrey and Lee Hedgepeth. Our editor is Karen Shakurji. Fact checking by Kate Furby. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Production support from Luke Lamond. Engineering by Nina Byrd Lawrence. Original scoring by Luis Guerra with Paul Brainard and Jimmy Bod. Sound design and additional music by Jake Gorski. I'm Malcolm Gladwell. Malcolm Glabel here. I'm excited to share that Revisionist History is a Signal Awards finalist in two categories. The Signal Awards recognize the top podcasts that define culture. Our episode the Joe Rogan Intervention is up for best conversation starter. And our episode Running Hot is up for best writing. We're thrilled to be nominated and from now until October 9th, you can help us win by voting for us. [e-mail] that's vote.signal S I G N A L award.com. we're thankful for your support.

[A]

This is an iHeart podcast.