Motivated by infinite-dimensional ecological and biological models such as reaction-diffusion SPDEs and stochastic functional differential equations, we develop a general criteria for stochastic persistence (coexistence) in terms of an average lyapunov function, which was previously known only in finite dimensions. To apply our results to SPDEs we analyze the projective process, and we employ a combination of mild (stochastic convolution) and variational (lyapunov function) techniques. Our analysis also requires some nontrivial well-posedness and nonnegativity results for reaction-diffusion SPDEs, which we state and prove in great generality, extending the known results in the literature. Finally, we present several examples including ecological models (Lotka-Volterra), an epidemic model (SIR), and a model for turbulence. Notably we show that, as in the SDE case, coexistence in the Lotka-Volterra model is determined by the invasion rates.