RewriteRule doesn't work in .htaccess files

I am testing with aMemberPro Trial. The install and Set-Up goes very smoothly, but when I try to set up folder protection, three options are greyed out with red text explainations.

new_rewrite (RewriteRule doesn't work in .htaccess files on this server)

I thought this might be because I had my hosting account set up to run PHP as a CGI. So I switched to run PHP as an Apache Module. I deleted all the amember files and droped all the amember_ tables, and re-installed.

Then I got a red message under new_rewrite that said my permissions were wrong for the /amember/data/new_rewrite directory, so I chmod 777 new_rewrite.

Then I got this:

new_rewrite (RewriteRule doesn't work in .htaccess files on this server)
php_include+mod_rewrite (RewriteRule doesn't work in .htaccess files on this server)
php_include+auto_prepend_file (php_value auto_prepend_file directive doesn't work in .htaccess files on this server)

I ran the test: http://yoursite.com/amember/data/tests/mod_rewrite/1.php

Which gave the result:
' 1-first_file '

1) What is happening?
2)How can I change my server to work with 'new_rewrite' OR 'php_include+mod_rewrite'?

Thanks!

Jason