Father George A. Stallings Jr., the black director of evangelization for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., announced on 21 June 1989 that he planned to form an African American Catholic Church over the specific objections of his archbishop, James A. Cardinal Hickey, and the Catholic hierarchy. Stallings named his new congregation the Imani Temple African American Catholic Congregation. He chose the word imani because it means "faith" in Swahili. The decision to create a new Catholic Church specifically for African Americans stemmed from Stallings's beliefs that the Catholic Church was too hierarchicaland at times racist and that some-bishops were imperialistic in their views toward nonwhites. Stal-- lings claimed he loved the Catholic church but had to create a new body in order to improve it. The Catholic Church's thirteen black bishops agreed with Stallings's concerns but not his tactics...