To hear the Rev. Susan Andrews tell it, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) can shake off its snoozy, white-bread image and become a gathering place for open-minded Christians who are turned off by the religious right and want to make a difference in the world.

But she knows that if Presbyterian churches in the Lower Hudson Valley are going to play to their strengths — and stop losing members — they have to become known for something other than warbling old hymns and opening their doors to the local Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

"The Presbyterian Church has not done a good job telling our story," she said. "We can offer spirituality as something other than a Pentecostal, born-again experience or rigid Catholic doctrine or right-wing, pro-life stuff. It's about an imaginative, metaphorical approach to faith, not a doctrinaire, rigid, biblically literal approach."

Andrews will soon have a chance to create a Presbyterian laboratory in New York. She has been chosen as the new leader of the Hudson River Presbytery, a regional, diocese-like body of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) that includes 92 congregations in Westchester, Rockland, Putnam and five northern counties...

Rev. Susan Andrews is regularly guilty of demonizing Israel, retailing highly colored and exaggerated tales of Israeli misdeeds while turning a blind eye to terrorism and official Palestinian incitement to violence, as in this January 14, 2005, sermon where she charges Israel with "shooting live ammunition at unarmed civilians, killing women and children, demolishing homes, arresting Palestinians without charge, arbitrarily destroying crops and property."...

Rev. Andrews favors both divestment and the resolution demanding that Israel dismantle the security fence that has saved so many lives, calling those stances "bold and courageous stances related to peace in the Middle East, and particularly for the rights of Palestinian people... it has put us putting our money where our mouth is in terms of our very strong commitment to speaking up for justice for the Palestinian people."