Lettuce Pray

Christian nationalism is a big part of the cyclospora story.

Photo by Ann on Unsplash

Recent news reports alleged the explosive outbreak of cyclospora-induced diarrhea in 34 states could be traced to lettuce produced by Taylor Farms, the largest producer in the country. (In the past day the FDA has walked back its claim tying the lettuce to Taylor Farms, but some people, noting that Taylor Farms has donated substantially to GOP-aligned PACs, are skeptical.) It is also increasingly clear that the Trump administration’s cuts to federal services and disease management specifically, under the guidance of Elon Musk’s DOGE, have hampered the national response to the crisis and made it harder to understand the sources and spread of the parasite. So, it seems like a good time to explore the political and ideological commitments of at least some members of the family behind Taylor Farms. This is a story about big business in America getting what it wants — and letting everyone else pay the price.

I first learned of Taylor Farms as I was researching my 2020 book The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism. In 2019, I attended the 20^th anniversary celebration dinner for a politically focused evangelistic outfit called Capitol Ministries, which took place at the World Ag Expo in Tulare, an agribusiness hub in California’s Central Valley.

To understand the worldview of the Taylors I met at that dinner, it helps to know something about the missionary work of Ralph Drollinger, the founder of Capitol Ministries and the leader of Bible study prayer groups active among Republicans in Congress and the Trump White House. Steve Taylor, a late scion of the multigenerational family that controls Taylor Farms and former CEO of the agri-business company Fresh Express, served on the board of Drollinger’s outfit from 2013 until 2020.

At that gathering, which also functioned as a fundraiser, I spotted Steve in jeans and a sport coat. Also present was his brother, Jeff (also since deceased), who came in late and was seated at my table for stragglers and misfits. Jeff led a chorus of “hallelujahs” from our corner of the tent, clapping for emphasis and firing off multiple rounds of “praise the Lord!”

At the core of the belief system that Drollinger and his acolytes share is the view that “Bible believers” should seek to dominate government at all levels and should govern in accordance with “biblical” principles.

“Scripture is replete with illustrations, examples and commands to underscore the important of winning government authorities for Christ,” Drollinger has written. “A movement for Christ amongst governing authorities holds promise to change the direction of a whole country…. Lawmakers must be men and women who are willing to be informed by Scripture.” Since the 2024 election, Drollinger reports that he has resumed Bible study and prayer groups in the new Trump White House and among congressional Republicans, as well as focusing on outreach to political leaders overseas.

I wrote about Capitol Ministries for The New York Times here and here and here.

Drollinger has very specific ideas about what biblical leaders will do once they control government. One thing they won’t do is offer government assistance to the poor. The guiding idea of the Social Gospel — that Christianity has something to do with loving thy neighbor and standing up for the meek — is an “aberrant” theology that improperly “infiltrated” mainline Protestantism, according to Drollinger. Social welfare programs “have no basis in Scripture,” he maintains. “The responsibility to meet the needs of the poor lies first with the husband in a marriage, secondly with the family (if the husband is absent) and thirdly with the church.” Your meek neighbor, he insists, will find no justification for state or even private-sector support in the Bible: “Again, nowhere does God command the institutions of government or commerce to fully support those with genuine needs.”

Drollinger has words of wisdom for laborers, too. In a Bible study titled “Toward a Better Biblical Understanding of Lawmaking,” he cites 1 Peter 2:18-21, “Servants, be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and gentle, but also to those who are unreasonable.” Here, Drollinger explains, “The economy of Rome at the time of Peter’s writing was one of slave and master. The principle however, of submitting to one’s boss carries over to today.”

Drollinger’s spiritual wisdom and evident longing for relations of dominance and submission also extends to his “biblical” understanding of gender relations. Women, he has maintained, should not be allowed to teach — or be placed in positions of leadership over — men in church. “If you look in the Bible all the leaders are male. It may not be what I would choose,” he has said with an air of feigned helplessness, “but that’s what God wants.”

Before his death at age 67, Steve Taylor was unambiguous in his support of Drollinger. In a “ministries update” on the Capitol Ministries website, Steve Taylor said, “I have worked with candidates who have become U.S. Senators and House of Representatives members and God really impressed upon me the importance of speaking spiritual truths into their lives. It became apparent that is what Ralph [Drollinger] is doing every day.” Steve also served for at least five years on the board of directors of the Family Policy Alliance, the public policy arm of Focus on the Family, a well-funded Christian organization promoting socially conservative, often political viewpoints and policies. His involvement in both Capitol Ministries and the Family Policy Alliance was unsurprising, as the two entities pursue largely similar agendas in many areas.

What does any of this have to do with Taylor Farms, which is presently run by the surviving brother, Bruce Taylor? Though Taylor Farms has made mega donations to GOP-aligned PACs, as noted earlier, I came across no evidence that brother Bruce shares the Christian nationalist preoccupations of his late siblings. But whatever the spiritual benefits of Drollinger’s program, it isn’t hard to see that it meshes well with the interests of agribusiness conglomerates like Taylor Farms. According to a report by the California-based investigative journalism outfit Capital & Main, first published in 2014 and updated in 2017, “Taylor represents the platinum standard for corporate industries that seek to maximize profits by treating their workforce as someone else’s problem—whether they be the temp labor contractors or the taxpayers who must pick up the tab when it comes to providing workers’ medical care, food stamps and other social services.”

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

The history of Taylor Farms involves the Taylor brothers’ father, Ted Taylor, taking over the business, then called Bruce Church, Inc., from his father-in-law. Under Ted’s guidance, Bruce Church, Inc. was known as “a fiercely anti-union industry giant,” according to Mark Sharwood, a full-time volunteer for the United Farmworkers Union from 1976 to 1982. “Bruce Church and its flagship brand Red Coach lettuce was our main target during my years in the boycott, starting in 1978.”

That year, the annual average earning of a hired farmworker in the U.S. was between $1600 and $2500. Today it is around $38,000 to $40,000, assuming year-round, full-time employment. With such modest earnings, a majority of farmworkers make use of needs-based assistance programs to help feed and care for their families. But Drollinger’s interpretation of the Bible would also seem to justify the Trump administration’s widespread cuts in food aid through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and other means. Republican megabill HR1 is set to reduce federal and state funding for Medi-Cal and CalFresh, which is likely to affect farmworkers at outfits like Taylor Farms.

The equation is nothing new. As the historian Kevin Kruse detailed in his book One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America, the alliance between large, oligopolistic, resource-extracting industries and reactionary religion flourished in the midcentury era when fossil fuel corporations and other big businesses threw their lot in with the Spiritual Mobilization movement that sought to unite God, country, and big business as a means for obtaining government blessing for exploitive economic arrangements.

In an earlier era, the vision for the spiritual renewal of government, as Capital & Main’s prescient analysis makes clear, was not to eliminate government altogether. Rather, it was to eliminate those parts of government that threaten to regulate businesses such as Taylor Farms. The programs that kept workers alive even while they worked for low wages with minimal labor rights were — at least implicitly — supported. But under the Trump administration, and with the ideological support of people like Drollinger and Russell Vought, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, an architect of Project 2025 and a key figure behind the proposals to slash food aid and other forms of government support, those safety nets are being shredded.

As for the rest of us — who must live in a world of contaminated lettuce and disempowered workers — well, Rep. Mark Alford (R-Bible), an avid member of Drollinger’s Bible Study group on the Hill, summed up the message well at an infamous town hall meeting. Facing constituents angry with DOGE’s demolition job, he assured the audience that “God has a plan” for the fired federal workers. Presumably the same divine beneficence will be at work among those now suffering from the gastrointestinal effects of cyclospora.

Katherine Stewart is an award-winning author and journalist who has covered politics, religion, and the rise of the anti-democratic movement, for over 17 years, Her New York Times bestselling book Money, Lies, and God is on Foreign Affairs’s list of Best Books 2025.

A briefer version of this story first appeared in the Contrarian