The church was built between 1920 and 1921 through private initiative and public subscription, to designs by the architect Theodor Wåhlin. It was consecrated the following year, with the first service held on 19 June 1921 and the first high mass celebrated at Midsummer. In its early years the chapel was run on a voluntary basis by the Kärra chapel association, before being handed over to Säve parish in 1928 and formally accepted as a gift for future maintenance in 1929.
Wåhlin's design is in the National Romantic style typical of the period, built of timber with a three-sided apse under a hipped roof and a narrower, lower porch than the main nave. The tall, sharply pointed tower is clad in copper sheeting and topped with a gilded cross. Two other churches, at Hamburgsund and Nösund, were built to almost identical plans. Despite thorough renovations in 1966 and again in 1983–1985, the interior retains its original character, with airy proportions, high ceilings and fixed pews finished in period-style marbled woodwork.
Until 2001 the building was officially known as Kärra kapell. The parish council decided to rename it Kärra kyrka, reasoning that a consecrated church should not risk being mistaken for a mere funeral chapel.
Inside, the altarpiece, completed in 1928, depicts the Last Supper and was painted by Gunnar Erik Ström. The church has two font basins: an older one in dark reddish-brown porphyry with a wooden-mounted basin, and a later font from 1966 made of pale brown clay by the artist Märta Taube-Ivarson, its bowl decorated with biblical reliefs and paired with a silver basin. A wall-mounted pulpit north of the chancel, reached by a hidden stair, has no canopy. The church bell, weighing around 300 kg, was donated by a private individual in 1926, and the organ on the west gallery was built in 2006 incorporating some older pipework.