Laughing, hail king amongst men outside the church (8)
I believe the answer is:
hilarity
'laughing' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'hail king amongst men outside the church' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
an anagram of 'hail' is 'hila' which is within the answer.
'king' could be 'r' (abbreviation of Latin rex) and 'r' is present in the answer.
'the' could be 't' (the is pronounced as a 't' sound in some dialects) and 't' is present in the answer.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for hilarity that I've seen before include "fun" , "Absence of gravity" , "Unrestrained mirth" , "Great merriment" , "Laughter" .)