Cue dramatic music – John Travolta’s rep says that he’s a member of the “church” of Scientology – forever. The Daily Mail ran a piece over the weekend claiming that Travolta, 55, has been questioning his involvement in Scientology following the death of his son Jett, 16, earlier this year. Jett suffered from what his parents said was Kawasaki syndrome, and there were reports that he had autism, a disorder that Scientology refuses to recognize. Jett died after suffering a seizure and hitting his head in a bathroom at his parents’ estate in the Bahamas. Many people wondered if Jett would have lived had he been properly treated with psychiatric medication. The Travoltas claimed that Jett was on anti-convulsant medication for years, but that it stopped working and that they consulted with neurologists, who recommended that he be taken off the drug. Jett’s family has surely been haunted by the question of whether they could have somehow prevented his death. You would expect that to include questioning the edicts of their cult, which stipulates that members never consult psychiatrists or take psychiatric medication. The Daily Mail could have been guessing, but there may have been an element of truth to their story, which stated that “his son’s sudden death has ‘deeply shaken’ Travolta’s faith in the strange sect, which makes wild claims about its ability to cure a variety of physical and mental disorders.”

That’s not true, according to Travolta, who has asserted through his rep that he will always be a Scientologist:

A July 25 report in Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper claiming that Travolta, 55, had grown disenchanted with his longtime religion in the wake of his son Jett’s death in January is “totally false,” his rep Paul Bloch tells PEOPLE.

“There’s no change in the relationship between the Church of Scientology and John,” says Bloch. “He is a member and it’s as it was, now and forever.”

The still-grieving actor, his wife Kelly Preston, 46, and their daughter Ella Bleu, 9, recently returned to one of their favorite spots: their oceanfront island home in Isleboro, Maine, where the family spent their last Christmas with Jett in 2008. On July 18 Travolta and Preston exchanged greetings with locals at the island’s Dark Harbor gift shop. “He’s pretty low-key,” says one local. “He pretty much stays to himself when he comes.”

The getaway was a break for Preston, who has been filming The Last Song – a coming-of-age film in which she plays the mother of Miley Cyrus’s character – in Savannah, Ga., this summer. The actress’s maternal instincts have made an impression on Cyrus, 16, who on July 10 posted a photo of the two on the set with the caption, “Loving on Mama Kelly!”

[From People]

I don’t believe much in The Daily Mail, which regularly makes up stories about celebrities when they’re not pointing out knobby knees and small amounts of cellulite. If the story was true, though, it’s not like Travolta is going to admit that he has problems with his cult. Scientology surely has some deep dark dirt on him. One of the key ways that cults control their members is by eliciting confessions so that they have something to hold against them if they threaten to leave and/or expose the cult. Scientology does this through the “auditing” process, which occurs early on in a person’s involvement and serves to help indoctrinate and brainwash them.

You would expect Travolta and Preston to be distancing themselves from Scientology behind the scenes and wondering if conventional medication could have prevented their son’s death. Scientology teaches that mental illness is not real and that their hack treatments can solve any problem. When the Scientology treatments inevitably fail, it doesn’t matter because in their eyes the person was defective anyway. No one wants to believe that about a child they lost. It’s human to wonder if things could have turned out differently and if your loved one could have lived. Travolta will never know, and that’s got to be eating away at him – and his faith.

John Travolta is shown at the Bolt premiere on 11/17/09. Credit: WENN.com