Next week, Matt Queen finds out what his penalty will be for lying to federal investigators about a sex assault cover-up at a Southern Baptist seminary. Through his lawyer, Queen is trying to make himself seem like a TRUE CHRISTIAN™. Yes, he just made a little bitty oopsie-doodle-boodle! He was under unthinkable amounts of social pressure from “the dysfunctional atmosphere at the seminary!” Yep, you heard him! It’s not his fault that he personally opened his mouth and uttered lies to the feds!
Of course, I can’t blame Matt Queen for not wanting to go to prison. But whew, lads, this document his lawyer filed (local archive) is a perfect example of why nobody should trust Southern Baptists in any capacity or setting with kids of any age. These character witnesses affirm one thing above all: Matt Queen, like Southern Baptists in general, perfectly demonstrates the flaws of SBC culture.
Today, we’ll dive into this document to learn exactly why Matt Queen lied to the feds. Folks, this is one doozy of a ride.
(This post first went live on Patreon on 2/28/2025. Its audio ‘cast lives there too and is available now! Previous Matt Queen posts: Feds find out about SBC lies; Matt Queen’s overall dishonesty; How Matt Queen might become the SBC’s scapegoat sacrifice to the feds; Why Matt Queen lied. He also shows up here in a do-nothing committee called the EVANGELISM TASK FORCE. Really, the pre-pandemic SBC was such a hoot.)
SITUATION REPORT: Matt Queen will be sentenced soon, and he really wants to avoid accountability here
(Full timeline of the entire case here.)
Over this past year, we’ve followed the Matt Queen story. Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS) employed him for years. As he climbed up the ranks of Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) leadership, he eventually became the school’s interim provost around October 2022.
In November 2022, a popular and well-known student attending their undergrad school, Christian Flores, sexually assaulted a woman. The Dean of Women, Terri Stovall, reported the assault when she heard about it (at church!). But by January 2023, campus police had done nothing. At that time, Stovall cornered Matt Queen and the seminary’s chief of staff, Heath Woolman. She demanded action. Instead, Woolman allegedly ordered her to destroy her report.
In May 2023, federal investigators got involved with the case. When they met with Matt Queen, he lied to them. He told them he’d taken notes during that January meeting—when he hadn’t. He also claimed that he didn’t hear Woolman tell Stovall to destroy her report—when another employee overheard the meeting and corroborated Stovall’s claim.
In June 2023, Matt Queen admitted that he’d lied to the feds. The next year in May 2024, the Department of Justice indicted Matt Queen of falsifying records. Matt Queen blustered up a storm about how he’d be “vindicated by God and man” in court. Maybe he’d forgotten that he’d already admitted to doing exactly what the charges said he did.
Last week, Matt Queen’s attorney filed a Presentence Report. It contains excerpts from 59 people’s letters. He filed this report as part of Queen’s plea for leniency from the court, as well as Matt Queen’s attempt to make himself look as pitiful and regretful as possible—and his attempt to shift the blame for his choices to SWBTS’ leadership culture.
Matt Queen’s sentencing takes place on March 5th, which is next week. So we’ll soon see if this document found a soft spot in the judge’s heart.
Southern Baptists don’t care about sex abuse
Of particular note, the attorney filing this report, Sam Schmidt, hopes that the judge will sentence Matt Queen to a fine and probation. He wants to paint Matt Queen as a poor widdle victim of “dysfunctional” seminary culture. See, Queen just got overwhelmed with the backdoor politicking and cronyism.
To give his argument more credence, the attorney presents us with 59 letters from various people who’ve known and worked with Matt Queen over the years. Only one appears to be a non-Christian. In fact, that’s the first excerpt in the document. It presents a subtle statement: Look! Even heathens are impressed by Matt Queen’s Jesus-osity! Everyone else appears to be not only a Christian but a Southern Baptist.
It truly is striking to see how Southern Baptists minimize lying about a sex assault on a SBC campus. Not one of these people was affected by Matt Queen’s lies. None of them are related to the woman who got assaulted. None of them even mentions knowing anybody involved. But they still want to be character witnesses for the guy who wanted to protect his SBC employer over telling the truth.
(You’ll notice, in the next section, that I bold various points of interest. We’ll be talking more about these points in a few minutes.)
What these character witnesses tell us about Matt Queen
Some letter-writers talk about Matt Queen’s “authenticity.” Many more talk about the material help and emotional support he gave them. One writer specifically mentions that Queen “sacrificed his health” to go on various mission trips. A former student praises Queen for getting him into a crowded class that he needed.
At least one person who served on Queen’s staff praised him as “intentional, encouraging, and empathetic.” His fellow professors from SWBTS appear to adore him. One former SWBTS professor mentions Queen’s “unusually sensitive conscience.”
I was very interested in the letter-writers who talked about him apologizing constantly—even for things that didn’t qualify as needing apologies at all. Queen even apologized for lying to the feds to one letter-writer, Rob Collingsworth, who wasn’t involved in the cover-up or affected by it. Collingsworth took that apology as indicative of Queen’s “depth of character and his unwavering sense of accountability.”
Various people who probably attend Friendly Avenue Baptist Church, where Queen ministered before and (briefly) after leaving SWBTS, write similar praise for him. Of interest, many of them characterize his lies to the feds as a “mistake.”
One letter-writer, Sumner Spradlin, relates that Queen expressed “heartfelt remorse” over those lies. Unfortunately, that same testimony mentions that Queen thinks “his purpose and calling” is to be a minister.
And one letter-writer of particular interest is Charles Stewart. He’s an adjunct professor at SWBTS. He was also Queen’s pastor and his personal accountabilibuddy. Evangelicals love “accountability partners.” They think having one increases their credibility. Alas, accountabilibuddies are only as good as the information they receive and their own level of good-faith behavior. I doubt that Queen told Stewart anything about the ongoing federal investigation until after he’d crashed and burned. Afterward, though, Queen sure talked a lot to him about how sad he was about having disappointed Jesus.
Some letter-writers mention that Queen seemed super-stressed-out during the federal investigation. His wife and mother-in-law, in particular, note his distress. Why, he even had trouble publicizing his latest book! But don’t worry. Somehow, he muddled his way through the publicity tour.
One letter of particular interest comes to us from Thomas White, the President of Cedarville University. Queen preached there at least once in 2014. More to the point, Cedarville has had its own recent issues involving sex assaults on campus. And even more pointedly, Paige Patterson—who lost his own SWBTS president job in 2018 over dishonestly handling sex assault allegations—served as the chair of the Cedarville University board of trustees at the time. (Patterson only lost his chairman position at Cedarville after losing his job at SWBTS.) Most pointedly of all, Patterson had mentored both Thomas White and Matt Queen.
In his letter, White offers us an interesting note about Queen’s character. He writes:
Matt’s deep care for others sometimes makes it difficult for him to make tough decisions, as he loses sleep over them and feels personally devastated for weeks.
Oh, I imagine Queen has significant trouble making tough decisions. I’d actually expect that.
It’s totally the seminary’s fault!
Matt Queen’s wife, Hope, blames SWBTS for her husband’s decisions and actions:
Matt has always been an extreme extrovert, and the enforced silence, coupled with intimidation, led to a downward spiral in his mental health which was fueled by the dysfunctional atmosphere at the seminary.
She notes that as the federal investigation continued,
Matt’s anxiety grew. On a regular basis, I walked into our bedroom and found him on our bed with his chest heaving and limbs shaking. I watched with concern but felt trapped without a way for him to get help. . .
As well, an unknown writer describes working for SWBTS after Paige Patterson left in 2018:
From 2019-early 2023, our seminary experienced a period marked by significant uncertainty and fear, with many faculty members, myself included, concerned about job security and an unstable environment. These tensions were compounded by a lack of trust in the administration then. [. . .]
It became evident to me that the pressures of his role were taking a toll on him. I recall observing a noticeable change in Dr. Queen’s physical appearance as he began losing significant weight. The normally joyful man I had come to know seemed burdened by the weight of responsibilities and stress.
And Matt Queen himself appears to agree that his employer is to blame.
What Matt Queen himself thinks about his lies
Matt Queen echoes his wife’s pseudo-therapy language. Here, he describes the situation leading to him lying to the feds.
At the end of a tumultuous five-year period (2018-2023), the president of Southwestern Seminary, David Dockery, asked me to serve as the institution’s interim provost and vice president for academic administration. I loved Southwestern. In hindsight, however, I was not ready to function well within the dysfunctional dynamics of the time. As the DOJ’s investigation unfolded, I felt anxious and overwhelmed.
Being told not to talk about the investigation at all is, he claims, what led him to lying about it:
[B]eing told that I could not discuss the situation or the accompanying investigation with anyone sent me into a state of anxiety unlike anything I had ever experienced. The isolation and feeling of being unable to trust some colleagues and attorneys led me to make skewed and unwise decisions based on my own reasoning.
Say, did you notice that Christianese dogwhistle action?
Segue: Matt Queen and the Curious Christianese
That last bit, “on my own reasoning,” tastes a lot like a much-loved evangelical thought-stopper, “lean not on your own understanding.” That saying comes from Proverbs 3:5:
Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. . . [NIV]
It’s weird to hear an evangelical leave Jesus out of an equation like that, though. He couldn’t trust “some” of the people around him. But he doesn’t once mention Jesus cautioning him not to make his “skewed and unwise decisions.” How strange. But then, his seminary pal Benjamin Cole forgot the same thing. Cole wrote:
In truth, [Queen] probably never was well suited for the administrative positions to which three successive Southwestern presidents imprudently promoted him.
It’s like these guys completely forget that evangelicals don’t do anything without at least pretending to have prayed about it. If “three successive Southwestern [Seminary] presidents” promoted Queen to higher and higher positions of authority without claiming to have prayed, then this entire denomination stands indicted.
Then again, if they did claim to pray, then maybe they need to ask themselves if Jesus is actually a trickster god.
Where this court document leaves us
In his court document, Queen’s lawyer tells readers that Queen “has always believed that lying is wrong and sinful and understands that lying to investigating officials is illegal” (p. 15). I strongly suspect Queen might know that in his head. But his head-knowledge doesn’t map to his behavior. When he thought he’d save his own skin by lying, that’s exactly what he did. All of his goodness didn’t stop him from doing it. Neither did his religious beliefs. Or his god.
The picture I get from reading this document is one of a man who, in his heart, wants to do the right thing. Alas, he can be easily influenced by powerful people. He’s a product of his culture. So his good intentions and head-knowledge don’t map very well to the real and very dishonest world he inhabits.
That’s why so many people in that court document talk about Queen apologizing constantly for stuff that wasn’t even apology-worthy. Of course he does. I’d expect nothing else, just based on what I know of him and the SBC. This denomination’s entire sense of right and wrong is entirely subjective and shifts with the tides. Nothing has ever been more subjective than evangelicals’ so-called “objective morality.”
Matt Queen and the acceptable dishonesty of the SBC
At certain times and in certain settings, everyone in the SBC finds dishonesty perfectly acceptable. SBC laymen and leaders alike understand this. It’s exactly why they cannot be trusted to handle sex abuse on their own. It’s why they desperately need an independent third party to get anything done about this crisis.
Because of his immersion in SBC culture, Matt Queen freely and easily displays dishonesty in acceptable settings—like evangelism.
Anyone in Christianity who is very focused on evangelism and recruitment knows that honesty doesn’t pack churches full of new converts. That’s the entire reason why evangelism-minded Christians concoct spectacular (but fictional) conversion testimonies.
When one’s entire tribe regards dishonesty as acceptable in a particular context, then an externally-derived morality is going to internalize it that way.
Moreover, this court document leaves us with the impression of a person who has an externally-derived sense of self-identity, too. Matt Queen is good at anticipating the needs of others. He enjoys helping people. I don’t doubt those testimonies saying so. The picture they paint is consistent, after all.
The bad side of having an externally-derived sense of identity
Unfortunately, when surrounded by amoral or immoral people who are out to protect themselves or their institution, Queen is all too likely to go with that flow as well. He’s just one cell in the overall Southern Baptist organism. But that organism doesn’t always give him clear instructions about exactly what to do. Nor is it always good.
Left on his own, Queen can’t function. He’s thrown into indecision and anxiety. He constantly questions and second-guesses himself.
In short, Matt Queen functions best with a metric boatload of external feedback. But SWBTS denied him that feedback during the investigation.
Dude sounds extremely anxious and over-scrupulous on a good day. On bad days, however, like when he faced federal agents for an extremely uncomfortable sit-down without his superiors around to dictate how to proceed, he gets absolutely wrecked.
Compare and contrast: The one honest man in cycling
As I was researching, I found myself typing in rapid-fire stutters. I had a lot of thoughts about this story. They began to overwhelm me.
So to relax, I watched a 2015 movie called The Program. I chose it simply because I had it in a tab in my browser. The Program tells the story of how Lance Armstrong got into doping (using performance-enhancing drugs) to win the Tour de France. Armstrong wasn’t the only guy doping, of course. Everyone else in the race was doing it too.
At least, everyone except for one honest man.
Initially, I played this movie because of Lee Pace. Indeed, Pace delivers a great performance as Armstrong’s very self-interested, quick-thinking agent. But my attention fixed upon this one French racer instead.
You see, Christophe Bassons was the one cyclist who refused to take any of those doping drugs or try any of the dopers’ increasingly-sophisticated tricks. He felt that if he couldn’t win on his own, then he didn’t deserve to win at all.
What real morality looks like
More than that, though: If anybody at all asked Christophe Bassons about doping in cycling, he answered honestly and fully. He not only refused to dope himself to win, but he also refused to hide what he knew about others doping.
Really, Bassons functioned poorly within the dishonest, cutthroat world of high-end bicycle racing as it existed in the late 1990s-early 2000s. As payment for his honesty, the other bicyclists—particularly including Armstrong himself—bullied, insulted, and ostracized the one good, true, honest athlete among them.
After a couple of his aggrieved peers tried to kill him during a race by running him into a ditch in 2001, he quit racing entirely. But he never shut up about the doping.
As I went to bed, I found myself comparing Christophe Bassons to Matt Queen. Matt Queen blamed his dishonesty on feeling isolated from the other seminary leaders and on the “dysfunctional” culture at SWBTS.
But Bassons was isolated too. He operated within a very dysfunctional culture as well. And yet he never folded. He refused to be dishonest or to hide dishonesty. His sense of self was rock-solid, and his sense of morality derived from within. He didn’t adopt it based on what his group had deemed acceptable.
He’s like the Bizarro-world version of Matt Queen. He’s what Matt Queen needed to be—but never can be, at least while he affiliates with the SBC’s liars-for-Jesus.
Begging for mercy for Matt Queen
Toward the very end of the court document, a couple of letter-writers argued that Matt Queen’s lies to the feds weren’t at all indicative of his character:
I have no doubt that his error in judgment to which he has admitted does not define him as a person. [Travis Kerns, former SWBTS professor]
While this incident was unfortunate, I firmly believe it was an anomaly in an otherwise exemplary record of behavior [Bruce Gale, unknown affiliation]
The letter-writers beg this case’s judge to deliver a sentence that weighs Matt Queen’s lifetime of service to the SBC and the good he’s done against one instance of lying to the feds:
His sorrow and repentance over that error, and his effort to correct the error, are what define him. [Kerns]
I would encourage you to consider his stellar reputation and the effective way he has led his life and ministry. [Jimmy Draper, unknown affiliation]
Queen’s lawyer ends his filing by promising the judge that Queen will never, ever “make such an error again.”
But these lies weren’t an “anomaly” —or even unexpected
I suspect that Matt Queen is all but fated to do exactly that. Worse, his lies to the feds were not an anomaly but a purely-expected part of his character. He’s not a bad guy or a good guy. Rather, he’s a Southern Baptist “made man.”
When Southern Baptist culture dictates goodness, then Matt Queen is reliably good. When it dictates dishonesty, then Matt Queen is reliably dishonest. He’s best deployed in strictly-controlled settings where only good-faith actors surround him. Barring that, he needs to work in a place where his dishonesty reliably runs only along tribe-approved lines—like in evangelism.
Don’t imagine for a moment that he’s the only liar in seminary leadership. In that setting, the tribe accepts many forms of dishonesty. Matt Queen just didn’t have time to absorb the knack of it in that setting, is all. Nor was he in seminary leadership for long enough to develop the crony ties he’d have needed to fully escape penalties. (If he had, the feds would now be sentencing some other underling.)
Because of his relative inexperience with lying in a seminary setting, Matt Queen got caught in a lie so fantastical that it couldn’t last more than a month. Unfortunately for him, his superiors are more than willing to offer him up as a sacrificial lamb to the Department of Justice—when I suspect that they are lying far more freely and proficiently than he ever could.
The lies the SBC happily accepts
Don’t worry about Queen’s fortunes after this entire sentence thing is finished, though. Within the SBC, very few offenses are so bad that someone like Matt Queen can’t bounce right back into ministry again. Covering up a sex assault on an SBC campus barely cracks this denomination’s Top 10. So I’m willing to bet a fresh cream-filled donut that he’s taking a dive here and expects a post-sentencing return on his deposit into the SBC’s crony network.
And as long as his superiors corral him within his wheelhouse, he’ll probably do all right. I do hope he enjoys evangelism, because that’s where he needs to stay. Hopefully, his superiors know that.
After all, evangelicals consider it perfectly acceptable to lie in the course of evangelism. Not even the feds will care if he does that every day and twice on Sundays.
NEXT UP: In the wake of Pope Francis’ illness, Catholics’ faction warfare is heating up. We’ll check it out next time. See you soon! <3
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Additional Note:
It’s not enough to say it’s not what’s in your heart
You’ve tainted every moment till death do we part
I know you didn’t mean it, boy, you meant so well
The pennies are cascading down your wishing well. . .
You’ve got your reputation and your good intent
Such a good intent[Kimbra, “Good Intent“]
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