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