Tree making church gloomy, almost (5)
I believe the answer is:
cedar
'tree' is the definition.
(cedar is a kind of tree)
'church gloomy almost' is the wordplay.
'church' becomes 'ce' (abbreviation for Church of England).
'gloomy' becomes 'dark' ('dark' can be similar in meaning to 'gloomy').
'almost' means to remove the last letter (most of the word but not all of it).
'dark' with its last letter removed is 'dar'.
'ce'+'dar'='CEDAR'
'making' is the link.
(Other definitions for cedar that I've seen before include "Great hardwood tree associated with Lebanon" , "representative of Lebanon?" , "Tree (Lebanese?)" , "Cypress-like tree" , "Leaving body" .)