Christianity Today Paywall: How to Read Christianity Today Articles for Free
Christianity Today meters its essays, reviews and features on Piano and asks you to subscribe after a few free reads. How it works and how to read it in full.
Paywall behaviour last tested
Christianity Today is the evangelical magazine founded in 1956 by Billy Graham and based in Carol Stream, Illinois. It publishes news on churches and ministries, long essays on theology and public life, book, film and music reviews, and the CT Pastors material aimed at people who preach every week. Its essays and reviews travel well on social media and in church email chains, so a reader arriving from a shared link often opens the page to find a subscribe prompt sitting over the text. This guide explains how the paywall works and how to read a full article.
How the Christianity Today paywall works
Christianity Today runs a metered paywall on the Piano platform. Non-subscribers get a limited number of free articles a month, and once the allowance is used the article is replaced by a prompt to subscribe. Digital subscriptions are sold monthly or annually, and the monthly price works out at a few dollars a month. The meter is stored in a browser cookie, so it counts the articles you open on one device.
The gate is enforced in the browser. The article text is delivered in the page so that search engines can index it, and a script then checks whether you are a subscriber or over your limit and swaps the body for the subscription box. A reader that fetches the page without running that script receives the complete article. Our explainer on metered versus hard paywalls sets out why that distinction matters, and Christianity Today sits firmly on the softer side of it.
Our tests on 27 October 2026 through Skip the Paywall:
- A 2,049-word Christianity Today review essay from June 2026 on Walter Brueggemann, "A Political Pulpit for Me but Not for Thee", loaded in full, all 37 paragraphs.
- A 1,139-word Christianity Today piece from 2017 on Kendrick Lamar's album DAMN. and its wrestling with judgment loaded in full, all 13 paragraphs.
- A 4,233-word Christianity Today feature, "Frozen Embryos Are the New Orphan Crisis", on IVF and embryo adoption after Dobbs, loaded in full, all 116 paragraphs.
Read a Christianity Today article in full
- Copy the article link. Christianity Today links look like christianitytoday.com/2026/06/ followed by a slug made from the headline, with the year and month of publication in the path, and older pieces follow the same pattern with their own dates.
- Paste it into the box on the home page and press Read Article.
- The story appears in a clean reader view with the headline, byline and full text.
Other approaches
- The free allowance. The meter gives every reader a number of free articles each month, so an occasional reader who follows one or two links may never reach the prompt at all.
- Private windows. The monthly meter lives in a cookie, so a private window resets it. The count starts again when you open a fresh one.
- Related free sources. Much of what Christianity Today writes about, from the court rulings it analyses to the books, films and albums it reviews, is discussed in free coverage elsewhere, and the primary documents themselves are usually public.
How it compares with other magazines
The general-interest magazines Christianity Today's essays are often shared alongside behave differently. The Atlantic and The New York Times do not work: both block the reader, and we have explainers for each (The Atlantic, The New York Times) rather than guides. The New Yorker loads in full, as do Harper's Bazaar and the other Hearst titles. Among the religious press, the Norwegian Christian dailies Vårt Land and Dagen, the Polish Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny and the Christian Science Monitor all have guides and load in full. The full list of sites that work is kept current.
Subscribe if you read it regularly
Christianity Today has been publishing for seventy years and its long features, like the 4,233-word embryo piece in our test, take months of reporting. If you read its essays and reviews every week, or rely on the CT Pastors material for sermon preparation, a digital subscription at a few dollars a month is the right way to keep that work going.
Try it with an article
Paste the URL of an article from Christianity Today and read it in a clean reader view. Free, instant, no signup.
Frequently asked questions
How many free articles does Christianity Today give you?
A limited number a month. Christianity Today uses a metered paywall on Piano that counts the articles you open in a browser cookie and shows a subscribe prompt once the allowance is used. A private window resets the count.
Does the reader work on long Christianity Today features?
Yes. All three articles in our 27 October 2026 tests loaded in full, including a 4,233-word feature on frozen embryos with 116 paragraphs. The text is delivered in the page and hidden by a script, which the reader does not run.
Does it work on The Atlantic too?
No. The Atlantic and The New York Times both block the reader, so they are not on the list of supported sites and have explainers rather than guides. The New Yorker, Vårt Land, Dagen and Tygodnik Powszechny all load in full.