CHST

When the bell rang on the New York Stock Exchange that morning, the traders didn’t expect much—maybe a biotech, maybe another food-delivery startup destined to die in Q4. What they got instead was a man in a simple linen suit stepping up to the podium, flanked by lawyers, venture capitalists, and a very nervous archbishop.

The banners unfurled:
CHRISTIANITY™ — Now Public. Ticker: CHST.

For a second there was silence—then chaos, a kind of secular Pentecost in which the tongues spoken were financial.

According to the prospectus filed the night before, Christianity was reorganizing as a “mission-driven, vertically integrated faith platform leveraging two millennia of brand recognition.” Its assets included real estate, ritual IP, sacred narratives, liturgical supply chains, and “2.3 billion active monthly participants.” Liability disclosures included historical scandals, doctrinal fragmentation, geopolitical entanglements, and “a non-negligible probability of eschatological events.”

Retail investors loved it. Institutions were cautious. Hedge funds were ecstatic: finally, a metaphysical asset with quantifiable volatility.

At 9:31 AM, trading opened. CHST surged 40% immediately, buoyed by the promise of “eternal value” and a buyback program called Redemption Plus™. Influencers posted unboxing videos of baptism starter kits. Investment newsletters debated whether forgiveness could be tokenized.

But something strange happened around midday.

People began turning up at the NYSE floor—not traders, not analysts, but ordinary people. Some had never held a share in anything. Some carried candles. Some carried questions. A few carried grief.

They weren’t there to buy. They were there because, somewhere in the filings, hidden in the language of quarterly projections and governance structures, was the faint outline of something they recognized: a story that wasn’t meant to be monetized.

A janitor approached the linen-suited CEO.
“Sir,” she asked quietly, “if I can’t afford a share, does that mean I’m out?”

He looked at her, at the crowd gathering behind her, at the screens flashing price movements like a nervous gospel.

“I… don’t know,” he said. “We didn’t think that far.”

GPT