Personally, my great grandparents, for whatever reason, decided to “convert” to the Church of England (but I didn’t find this out until I got interested in Judaism at age 24). BTW, this story is somewhat similar for most gerim that I’ve met.
My parents weren’t religious, they sent me to a Christian school my whole life. At 16, I became a very religious Christian.
Fast forward a few years, I was working for & living with a SECULAR Jewish family, and I was a RELIGIOUS Christian. The fact they were secular & I was religious is important, because when I lived them, I said to myself “Why would anyone want to convert them? They still have higer moral standards than anyone at church”….I actually saw that if they converted they would be moving backwards in their moral character….and when I told my Christian friends this, well, let’s just say that it started my descent out of the church.
Either way, the boss & his wife left a big impression on me & I started to ask questions about Judaism. It started off slow, but I eventually decided to leave Christianity & embrace Judaism.
However, for various reasons in my family history, I am not halachically considered Jewish. So I have to convert. I’ve actually been in the process for 4 years THIS WEEK. I would have been “done” with it 2 years ago, but in the past few years America has been caught up in many invalid conversions, which made it much harder & much less stable for me.
And since it became much less stable, as far as if my eventual conversion in America would even be accepted in Israel, I chose just to move to Israel & convert here under the supervision of the rabbi(s) that are setting the standards for conversions. That way there wouldn’t be any problems in the future.
…and since I’m converting haredi, I don’t know how much longer I’ll be a part of the CR…or be on the internet at all.
Either way, my rabbi in America is a baal teshuva & went through a different situation; he actually didn’t look up to religious Jews. So when secular Jews tell him that they don’t like the way the frum Jews act, he half-jokingly says that he became more Jewish (read: “religious”) despite the Jewish people & their behavior.