Revolutionary embraces English church, showing forbearance (8)
I believe the answer is:
lenience
'forbearance' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'revolutionary embraces english church' is the wordplay.
'revolutionary' becomes 'lenin' (I've seen this before**).
'embraces' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'english' becomes 'e' (abbreviation).
'church' becomes 'ce' (abbreviation for Church of England).
'lenin' going around 'e' is 'lenien'.
'lenien'+'ce'='LENIENCE'
'showing' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for lenience that I've seen before include "Quality of mercy in awarding punishment" , "Tolerance" , "indulgence" .)