Church after evil past (5)
I believe the answer is:
since
'past' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'church after evil' is the wordplay.
'church' becomes 'ce' (abbreviation for Church of England).
'after' says to put letters next to each other.
'evil' becomes 'sin' (I've seen this before).
'ce' put after 'sin' is 'SINCE'.
(Other definitions for since that I've seen before include "Seeing that" , "in the past" , "Because; ago" , "From that time one" .)