When Matthews published claims that the Protestant clergy comprised a base of support of the American Communist movement, he was forced to resign.

[3] Matthews later recalled that the world-view of his early years was a simple one: "I knew nothing about class struggle, conscious race prejudice, economic royalists, or maladjusted personalities.

[3] During these undergraduate years, Matthews majored in Greek and Latin, although he later recalled that he was more preoccupied with extra-curricular activities such as sports, music, debate, college publications, and literary societies.

Following graduation, Matthews spent six years in Java, part of today's Indonesia, where he taught in one of the Chinese Nationalist schools established there after the fall of the Manchu dynasty in 1911.

Java introduced me to ethnology, anthropology, the cultural pluralism of the race, the history and varied institutions of religions, and a serious study of languages.

It was through this searching for answers to the social issues of the day, such as militarism, poverty, and racism, that Matthews was exposed to the ideas of political radicalism for the first time.

[1][2] Following graduation, Matthews joined the faculty of Scarritt College, a Methodist training school for missionaries and Christian teachers located in Nashville, Tennessee.

During this time, Matthews was active in the independent presidential campaign of Robert M. La Follette—a progressive labor-oriented challenge to the more conservative candidates of the Republican and Democratic parties.

[3] Throughout the 1920s, Matthews served on the faculty of an array of church-oriented institutes and training schools, usually established for a short period during the spring and summer months.

During these brief stints in front of fresh audiences, Matthews attempted to expound his beliefs in pacifism and improved race relations.

[3] He was ultimately forced to leave his permanent teaching post because of a "furor over an interracial party held in his home, at which whites were reported to have danced with Negroes.

[2] On November 6, 1929, Matthews joined the Socialist Party of America, effectively headed by Norman Thomas, himself a noted pacifist, former clergyman, and FIR associate[3] He was a periodic contributor as a writer for the Socialist and pacifist press, publishing material in the New York weekly The New Leader and Norman Thomas's The World Tomorrow, (where Esther Shemitz, wife of Whittaker Chambers worked).

[5] He was an adherent of the Militant faction of the Socialist Party and was chairman of its Revolutionary Policy Committee and sat on the board of directors of the League for Industrial Democracy.

[3] He wrote extensively for the Communist press, contributing material to the Daily Worker (including a front page denial of the reality of the massive famine in Ukraine in 1932–33),[3] Soviet Russia Today (edited by Jessica Smith, wife first of Harold Ware and then of John Abt), and The New Masses (whose editors included Whittaker Chambers.

[8] Regardless of this misconception of the phrase's origin, Matthews unquestionably helped popularize the term in so describing himself in the title of his repentant 1938 memoir.

Matthews became a symbol of the repentant former Communist who rendered expert service to the US government in its crackdown against what it perceived to be a network of underground subversion.

The appointment to the McCarthy committee's staff coincidentally coincided with the appearance of a provocative article by Matthews in the July 1953 issue of The American Mercury, entitled "Reds in Our Churches".

In this article, Matthews claimed "the largest single group supporting the Communist apparatus in the United States today is composed of Protestant clergymen.

The Senate Minority Leader Lyndon Johnson told Hubert Humphrey that attacking one of Byrd's friends would be the "beginning of the end for McCarthy.

On the floor of the Senate Byrd demanded that Matthews "give names and facts to sustain his charges or stand convicted as a cheap demagogue.

Matthews Jr. murdered his three teenage children with a baseball bat at their Springfield, Virginia home and seriously wounded his wife before killing himself with a knife.

[16] Matthews' papers are housed in Durham, North Carolina, at the Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library.

In 1964, with his health in decline, Matthews left the employ of the Hearst organization and sold a substantial part of his files to the Church League of America based in Wheaton, Illinois, before passing to Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.