Christians share certain beliefs that can be at odds with secular governments. In particular, Christians believe that salvation of souls is much more important than bodily health, as souls can exist for eternity with God while this-life bodies are ephemeral. If push comes to shove, that the health of the soul is more important than the health of the body (although these are obviously interrelated in certain ways) seems a basic, core Christian belief, and leads to various actions including martyrdom, putting one's bodily health at risk to preach the Gospel, and so on.
Indeed, Jesus says
"Don’t be afraid of those who want to kill your body; they cannot touch your soul. Fear only God, who can destroy both soul and body in hell." (Matthew 10:28)
This idea is counter to much of the prevailing ethos in many contemporary, essentially secular societies.
As such, one would expect differences between Christian organizations and secular governments on various policies related to worship or Christian practice, when those conflict with perceived public health prerogatives. The secular governments may not admit that the health of the soul is a vital goal, although indeed, various states in the U.S. did include churches as 'essential', for example,
"A dozen or more states have included churches as essential services and actually permit churches to meet, while the remaining states forbid religious gatherings, even small group in-home gatherings."
Has there been any denominational (or cross-denominational), official, public push-back against governments declaring in-person worship or other in-person church practices 'non-essential'?
When searching, I am only able to find various individual churches or persons declaring that corporeal worship, say, is indeed essential.
Update: I have found The Warrenton Declaration on Medical Mandates, Biblical Ethics, and Authority. It has 24 initial signers, most of whom are Pastors, and as of right now a large list of other people who have signed the declaration.
A major point is
"Unfortunately, due to a pervasive lack of theological and biblical understanding on these issues coupled with a tendency to over-attribute power and jurisdiction to the state, oftentimes churches have defaulted to almost reflexively acquiescing to whatever government health agency statements are made and the policies they put in place. The legitimacy of the sweeping powers attributed to the state is either simply presumed or reinforced with scant, or faulty biblical support. Powers are assumed to exist unless explicitly denied rather than regarded as absent unless firmly established by Scripture."
and in particular,
"XX. WE DENY that civil governments have lawful authority to enact “lockdowns” predicated on protecting “public health” as this is not their jurisdiction."
