Briefly suspended by church, creating suspicion (5)
I believe the answer is:
hunch
'suspicion' is the definition.
(I know that suspicion can be written as hunch)
'briefly suspended by church' is the wordplay.
'briefly' means to remove the last letter.
'suspended' becomes 'hung' (I've seen this in another clue).
'by church' becomes 'ch' (common abbreviation. I am not sure about the 'by' bit.).
'hung' with its final letter removed is 'hun'.
'hun'+'ch'='HUNCH'
'creating' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for hunch that I've seen before include "Intuitive guess" , "Inkling" , "Intuition, suspicion" , "protuberance" , "Bend over" .)