Prayers in spiritual warfare

Christian prayers for protection and spiritual struggle, across the major traditions.

Christian traditions of prayer in spiritual warfare differ from one another. The Pauline foundation, the armor of God passage in Ephesians 6:10-18, is shared across the traditions, but how Christians have developed it varies. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, spiritual warfare is principally warfare against the passions, the inward disordered loves; the Jesus Prayer, the hesychast tradition, and the Akathist hymns are the primary tools, and the Philokalia is the standard collection of patristic teaching. In the Roman Catholic tradition, the prayers for protection have a more direct focus on spiritual evil: the 1886 Prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel, the Anima Christi, and the protection psalms. The Celtic Christian tradition contributes the lorica or breastplate prayer, of which Saint Patrick's Breastplate is the most famous. Evangelical Protestant traditions have, since the 20th century, developed varied practices of deliverance prayer drawing on both the Pauline armor passage and on charismatic experience. The prayers below are presented in their traditional context, without taking theological positions on contested questions. They include the protection prayers from each major tradition, the prayers of self-examination that the Orthodox and Catholic traditions consider foundational to spiritual struggle, and the Jesus Prayer and Akathist hymns that anchor Eastern hesychast practice.