Sentence:  Even Rector himself was prey to this spirit of competition and he knew it , not for a more exalted office in the hierarchy of the <WSD>church</WSD> - his ambitions for the bishopry had died very early in his career - but for the one clear victory he had talked about to the colonel . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  one of the groups of Christians who have their own beliefs and forms of worship