It is the church for the Rosendal parish which is part of the Sunnhordland prosti (deanery) in the Diocese of Bjørgvin.

[1][2] The earliest existing historical records of the church date back to the year 1306, but it was not new at that time.

In 1678, the church became part of the newly established Barony Rosendal, where many of the Rosenkrantz family are buried.

[6][7] Together with more than 300 other parish churches across Norway, it was a polling station for elections to the 1814 Norwegian Constituent Assembly which wrote the Constitution of Norway.

Each church parish was a constituency that elected people called "electors" who later met together in each county to elect the representatives for the assembly that was to meet in Eidsvoll later that year.