Unmarried priest given stick entering church (8)
I believe the answer is:
celibate
'unmarried' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'priest given stick entering church' is the wordplay.
'priest' becomes 'eli' (I've seen this before).
'given stick' becomes 'bat' (bat is a kind of stick. I am not sure about the 'given' bit.**).
'entering' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'church' becomes 'ce' (abbreviation for Church of England).
'eli'+'bat'='elibat'
'elibat' inserted inside 'ce' is 'CELIBATE'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for celibate that I've seen before include "Just like Catholic priest" , "Citeable as unmarried for religious reasons" , "Abstaining from sexual relations" , "Abstaining from sex" , "He shuns sex" .)