Hope for religious group: to seize power (8)
I believe the answer is:
prospect
'hope' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'for religious group to seize power' is the wordplay.
'for' becomes 'pro' (I've seen this before).
'religious group' becomes 'sect' (I've seen this before).
'to seize' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'power' becomes 'p'.
'sect' placed around 'p' is 'spect'.
'pro'+'spect'='PROSPECT'
(Other definitions for prospect that I've seen before include "Expectation" , "'Outlook, vista (8)'" , "View - outlook" , "Possible customer" , "Someone who might buy" .)