The Neo-Lutheran movement managed to slow secularism and counter atheistic Marxist socialism, but it did not fully succeed in Europe. It partly succeeded in continuing the Pietist movement's drive to right social wrongs and focus on individual conversion. The Neo-Lutheran call to renewal failed to achieve widespread popular acceptance because it was rooted in a lofty, idealistic Romanticism that did not connect with an increasingly industrialized and secularized Europe. At best, the work of local leaders resulted in specific areas with vibrant spiritual renewal, but people in Lutheran areas overall continued to become increasingly distant from church life. Beginning in 1867, confessional and liberal minded German Lutherans joined together to form the Common Evangelical Lutheran Conference against the ever looming prospect of a legally binding union with the Reformed. However, they failed to reach a consensus among themselves on how much agreement in doctrine is necessary for church union. Eventually, the fascist German Christians movement forced the final national merger of Lutherans and Reformed into a single Reich Church, now the Evangelical Church in Germany, in 1933.