He established the Imani Temple as an independent denomination in 1989, making a public break in 1990 with the Roman Catholic Church on The Phil Donahue Show.

In 1985, Stallings secretly bought a private home in Anacostia in violation of the archdiocese rule requiring priests to live in the parish rectory.

The Washington Post reported that Stallings had allegedly misused parish funds to renovate his Anacostia house.

[3] In 1989, The Washington Post reported that a former altar boy at St. Teresa of Avila Church accused Stallings of sexual misconduct over a period of several months in 1977.

[7] In January 1990, Stallings announced on The Phil Donahue Show that he was breaking with papal authority and giving up Roman Catholic teaching on abortion, contraception, homosexuality, and divorce.

Thirteen days prior, Archbishop James Hickey of Washington had ordered him to seek psychiatric treatment, following incidents of insubordination, allegations of sexual abuse of children and homosexual relationships.

[7] In 2001, Stallings married Sayomi Kamimoto, a 24-year-old native of Okinawa, Japan, in a ceremony in New York City presided over by Sun Myung Moon, the founder of the Unification Church.

Emmanuel Milingo, a former Roman Catholic archbishop who was excommunicated, married a woman from South Korea at the same mass ceremony.

[12] Members of the Imani Temple were so upset by Stallings' sudden announcement of his upcoming wedding that some left after services in protest of his "close affiliation with and adoption of doctrine of the Unification Church".

[15][16] Following the January 2024 death of Pentecostal bishop and Christian universalist Carlton Pearson, Stallings denied the existence of an eternal and physical Hell.