Character behind church pew (5)
I believe the answer is:
chair
'pew' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'character behind church' is the wordplay.
'character' becomes 'air' (I've seen this before).
'behind' says to put letters next to each other.
'church' becomes 'ch' (common abbreviation).
'air' put after 'ch' is 'CHAIR'.
(Other definitions for chair that I've seen before include "Single seat" , "Presiding officer" , "Preside over - seat" , "A committee's most important seat" , "Get seat" .)