Re: “By default, if one rejects Calvin’s presupposition (of the fall of man) then you are a Marxist”
This is absurd - Calvin was not the first to teach the idea of the fall of man - from Moses to the Jewish Rabbis to the NT Apostles to the early church fathers to Catholic teachings to Baptist to Lutheran to , yes, John Calvin, all believed and taught the doctrine of the fall of man.
I would agree that Calvin has taken that doctrine to an extreme view that man so totally depraved that he CANNOT respond to God’s offer of salvation unless he is predestined to do so, but he is not the first to teach that man has a fallen, sinful nature.
It is a fact however, that English-speaking Protestants of 225 years ago were—overwelmingly—specifically Calvinistic in their assumptions about all of life, especially the ones in America.
While original sin—and the individual’s total inability to save himself, and God’s sovereign grace—is surely, universal (even small “c” catholic) Christian teaching, Calvin among the Protestant Reformers 200 years before America’s founding, was the loudest and clearest herald of that truth.
English Anglicans and Puritans (who you’ll recall were overwelmingly Americas first mass legal immigrants...) had a huge influence on the thinking and assumptions of their grandchildren....our Founders.