>A church is literally a place for mass assembly, while a liquor store or dispensary can easily be configured for social distancing, i.e. only let up to N customers in the store at a time depending on the size.

This logic makes 0 sense. Churches have the same capabilities to reconfigure, if not more most of them are just one big room. The same capabilities to limit patrons if it was required. They could split services and space the people out, or only let in N numbers of people as you suggested