"The black community was also still experiencing discrimination and had begun to form their own sub-culture apart from the dominant British and Christian ideals. The nuclear group consisted of Creole ex-slaves and their descendants. They had developed a common set of cultural characteristics, which combined to form the mainstream of the cultural pattern of Trinidad, though many Europeans still refused to accept African religious practices as genuine forms of worship and treated the devotees of African religions badly But the masses combined elements of Catholicism with non-Christian religious practices: African gods and spirits were equated with Catholic saints. The membership of these Afro-Christian sects was exclusively lower-class and black."