As a member of the governing First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, apostle Hugh B. Brown took pride knowing that he was different from his fellow general authorities. He was an outsider — a Canadian and a liberal Democrat in a church hierarchy dominated by conservative Republicans from the American West.

“I am a rebel,” Brown once boasted to his friends.

When Brown moved with his family from Canada to Utah in 1927, he wasn’t sure whether he should be a Democrat or a Republican. Needing advice, he asked then-church President Heber J. Grant — a Democrat — which party to join and the president told him to join his party. He asked the same question of Grant’s counselor Anthony Ivins, also a Democrat. Join the Democratic Party, they said, adding that if Brown wa

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