Hi, welcome!
Good to see you are getting ready to start Wayfarer and planning to map a small town out!
A few considerations. I would love to see the community comment on this and am sure the overall answer from this thread will come out as “yes and no” as a lot of subjective interpretation will come into it, also on what constitutes “leniency”. I’m not exactly sure what you mean by quality and what type of area we are taking about, but Wayfarer has a set of eligibility criteria, rejection criteria and acceptance criteria and these are the same for everyone. Rural areas don’t get a pass for things that would otherwise make something a clear reject (game mentions, single-family private residential property, …), so we should always try to make our nominations as bulletproof as possible!
What however could change depending on the type of area is the relative importance some types of places have for their communities, which is indirectly part of some criteria. A commonly cited example is “the only place to eat at 200 km around is what is otherwise a not very interesting chain that would not hold a lot of significance in other places in the country”. Depending on their context places like these could become focal points around which communities crystallize. (It helps if the submitter conveys this in a clear way without begging.)
This, however, is part of the “use your best judgment” aspect of Wayfarer, so while some people who frequent these forums are certainly more aware of considerations like in the previous paragraph, we cannot guarantee that the reviewers you will get will necessarily be “rural-lenient”.
In review, it is also hard to know what constitutes a “true” rural area (some submitters consider their suburbs to be one) and with the base tools you are given you do not see wayspots outside of what is in the end a pretty small radius. We cannot force reviewers to research the cities they see in review, it’s nice if they do but it’s safer to provide all the context that is needed directly in the nomination. In turn some pretty remote areas may already have prolific submitters, so after what “cutoff” do we stop being “lenient” with them? Considering a current bug where sometimes wayspots are missing on the duplicate check I would not rely on this. So again it comes back to always making the best effort you can so that your nomination clearly conveys the interest of what you are nominating.
I don’t see why one would consider churches and museums as you mention as low quality (I however would want to know more about the drawings you also saw there, as temporary objects are generally not eligible), and we are happy to help you prepare your nomination ideas even at a distance for when you are ready.
What I would like to clarify further (tangent to your question but you may want to keep this in mind) however is that you are not nominating Pokéstops. You are nominating wayspots to the Lightship database through the Wayfarer system. It is not only a database for Pokémon GO, but for multiple other present and future games. All games have density rules, Pokémon GO too, and you may find yourself nominating something that will not make it to Pokémon GO. You can read further at this link. Considering recent developments such a wayspot still may end up becoming part of the rotation for power spots or it may help someone in a different game, but just be aware of this fact to avoid any disappointment. Note that pins have to be exactly on the objects, rural area or not, Pokémon GO or not.
Sorry for the long post but as I’m sure you are starting to realize Wayfarer has nuances - it’s best to get ready for it as a newer submitter. I hope it helps somewhat!