Leading cults hurry to punish in the name of moral improvement (7)
I believe the answer is:
chasten
'name of moral improvement' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both to do with communicating as well as being verbs in their base form.
Maybe you can see an association between them that I can't see?
'leading cults hurry to punish in' is the wordplay.
'leading' indicates taking the first letters (the leading letter of the word).
'hurry' becomes 'haste' (haste is hurrying or rushing).
'to punish in' becomes 'n' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
The initial letter of 'cults' is 'c'.
'c'+'haste'+'n'='CHASTEN'
'the' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for chasten that I've seen before include "Moderate" , "Subdue - a stench (anag)" , "Suppress" , "Censure severely" , "Subdue, correct by punishing" .)