Subtlety shown by woman of faith taking over a church (6)
I believe the answer is:
nuance
'subtlety' is the definition.
(synonyms)
'faith taking over a church' is the wordplay.
'faith' becomes 'nu' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'taking' says to put letters next to each other.
'over' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'a' becomes 'an'.
'church' becomes 'ce' (abbreviation for Church of England).
'nu'+'an'+'ce'='NUANCE'
'shown by woman of' is the link.
I am not very happy about this link. Some or all of it may belong to another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for nuance that I've seen before include "Slight difference in meaning etc" , "Subtlety, nicety" , "A hint or shade" , "Fine shade of meaning" , "Subtle shade of meaning" .)