Being faithful, new church gets behind Christian era on Earth (9)
I believe the answer is:
adherence
'being faithful' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are singular nouns, I can't understand how they can define each other.
'new church gets behind christian era on earth' is the wordplay.
'new' becomes 'n' (common abbreviation eg NT for New Testament).
'church' becomes 'CE' (abbreviation for Church of England).
'gets behind' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other).
'christian era' becomes 'ad' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'on earth' becomes 'here' (I've seen this in another clue).
'n'+'ce'='nce'
'ad'+'here'='adhere'
'nce' put after 'adhere' is 'ADHERENCE'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for adherence that I've seen before include "loyalty" , "Sticking together" , "devotion" .)