I don't know where he hails from, but I'd put a nickel in the dark on South Africa, which if I'm right will have had to alter his perception of humanity quite a bit, and dampened his enthusiasm -- like Kurz's in Heart of Darkness -- for Christian uplifting of the pullulating masses of happily unchristlike barbarians.
Besides, Europe is pretty much a religious dead zone; their Christianity pretty much died of materialism during the two World Wars. By the time my old man got to France and Germany in 1944 and 1945, he said the congregations for weekly Mass were down to children, very old men, and women, and were already well shy of anything like a full house.
Steyn was born in Canada, and educated in the UK.